zlacker

>>tablet+(OP)
>If you were trying and failing to use an LLM for code 6 months ago †, you’re not doing what most serious LLM-assisted coders are doing.

Here’s the thing from the skeptic perspective: This statement keeps getting made on a rolling basis. 6 months ago if I wasn’t using the life-changing, newest LLM at the time, I was also doing it wrong and being a luddite.

It creates a never ending treadmill of boy-who-cried-LLM. Why should I believe anything outlined in the article is transformative now when all the same vague claims about productivity increases were being made about the LLMs from 6 months ago which we now all agree are bad?

I don’t really know what would actually unseat this epistemic prior at this point for me.

In six months, I predict the author will again think the LLM products of 6 month ago (now) were actually not very useful and didn’t live up to the hype.

>>davidc+K8
tptacek wasn't making this argument six months ago.

LLMs get better over time. In doing so they occasionally hit points where things that didn't work start working. "Agentic" coding tools that run commands in a loop hit that point within the past six months.

If your mental model is "people say they got better every six months, therefore I'll never take them seriously because they'll say it again in six months time" you're hurting your own ability to evaluate this (and every other) technology.

>>simonw+Oa
But they say "yes, it didn't work 6 months ago, but it does now", and they say this every month. They're constantly resetting the goal post.

Today it works, it didn't in the past, but it does now. Rinse and repeat.

>>JohnKe+bl
"they say this every month" But I think the commenter is saying "they" comprises many different people, and they can each honestly say, at different times, "LLMs just started working". I had been loving LLMs for solving NLP since they came out, and playing with them all the time, but in my field I've only found them to improve productivity earlier this year (gemini 2.5).