This has been my experience. I’ve been working on an app (highly successfully) since February, with the help of an LLM (ChatGPT). It has not been used as an author. Rather, it’s been a “coding partner.” I’ve been the one that has submitted the work to VCS, and run the tests.

I’ve found the most utility in having it do “small stuff that I could do, myself, but it’s faster to have the LLM do it,” and in analyzing intractable bugs, like memory and threading problems. It’s really good at analyzing a bunch of code, and seeing a small typo that results in something like a strong reference.

In both these cases, my own expertise is vital. I’m asking it to act as a consultant; to give me advice and material to be integrated into a whole that I am architecting.

I guess part of it, is that I haven’t been able to completely “give in,” and wholly trust the LLM, like I hear many people do (profitably, I guess). I’m used to having my sleeves rolled up, and my hands in the dough. Catching some pretty severe mistakes, from time to time, has reinforced this perception, on my part. I wouldn’t catch these, if I didn’t know what I was doing.