alt Hacker News> In addition to what the author discusses, I think skill-atrophy, stagnation due to complacency (i.e.: "why grow and learn if an agent can do it" mindset), and cognitive laziness are additional risks that come with overrelying on LLMs. Humans were meant to think. LLMs are a tool.
I know it's a cliche but the old IBM adage holds very true today
Machines should work, people should think
Maybe that's part of the problem I have with LLMs writing code. It would be nice if they just did the work, but there's a lot of underlying thinking and decision making with software work that is being offloaded any time you have the LLM do it
It seems like those decisions are being handwaved off as "not important" nowadays. Just let the LLM make those choices! But that is not sitting right with me for whatever reason. Something I should think about I guess
The decisions are important, but the understanding is that you define them as constraints. Which is what a segment of the software community, the upper class if you will, has always believed you should do, even before LLMs were a thing. The LLM simply becomes a constraint solver: machines do the work, people do the thinking.
This is the challenge of the middle class developer. They aren't accustomed to working with constraint thinking and they're past the junior stage where one is expected to still be shaping their thinking so they are struggling to find a fit.