I think reducing what LLMs do to « typing » is misleading. If it was just typing, you could simply use speech-to-text. But LLMs do far more than that, they shape the code itself. And I think we lose something when we delegate that work to LLMs
We do lose something, but really I still see it as an extension of autocomplete.
I had some pieces of code I wrote I was quite proud of: well documented, clear code yet clever designs and algorithm.
But really what always mattered most to me was designing the solution. Then the coding part, even though I take some pride in the code I write, was most a mean to an end. Especially once I start having to add things like data validation and API layers, plotting analysis results and so many other things that are time consuming but easy and imho not very rewarding
To me its just a natural evolution of the search engine.
And now looking back its an obvious outcome. The search engine of the time was the best way to find websites. But those websites grew in quantity and volume over time with information.. that information as we know is/was a vital input for LLMs.
Agreed. Also, it takes time to understand a domain properly- so the innate slowness of coding helps with letting things “simmer” in the back of the mind.
It’s not that they replace the act of typing, so much as figuring out how to express the specific algorithm or data structure in a given programming language, typing that, debugging it, etc.
Once I can describe something well, that’s most of the interesting part (to me) done.
with an LLM, you can have an ill formed idea, and let the LLM mold it into a shape to your liking, without having the investment required to learn how to do molding first.
