When you use an LLM, you don’t get the tool magic: (almost) nobody will claim that Claude or Cursor feel like an extension of their body - they are not consistent or fast enough to trick the brain like a keyboard or a car can.
These all seem the same to me? None of them are an "extension of my body"; they're tools I use.
With LLMs, you mostly just get more of the same: more code, more tests, more excuses.
You get more specs, more plans, more code, more tests. If you're getting excuses, something's wrong.
Is it worth the social brainwork?
There isn't any social brainwork. I'm using natural language to build things, not engaging in social discourse.
LLMs ask us to talk to them, but rarely reward that effort in kind.
Nor should they! They're not people, but they're designed to reach goals. If you set a goal (explicitly or implicitly) that you want a social conversation, they'll try to satisfy (and do poorly).
With a car, when I turn the steering wheel a quarter turn, the car immediately starts to turn at a known rate (I can't quantify it, but my muscle memory knows it). With an LLM, if I ask it to "turn the car", my "steering wheel" is natural language. I have to spend effort to figure out how to convey the rate at which I want the car to turn, and because the LLM has a noticeable delay, I also need to preemptively include some language anticipating how the expected rate should feel and what to do if it doesn't seem to feel right. And then the next time I say the same thing, the LLM decides to steer the car a bit differently anyways.
I'm sure the first farmers said that when they drove a tractor. "I can't feel the land", but the ones that got over that could do 10x yield. The "feel" just moves up the stack.
Why would you use an LLM to steer a car? That doesn't make any more sense than heating a water pressure chamber to drive a piston to steer a car. Wrong tool.
Comments
These all seem the same to me? None of them are an "extension of my body"; they're tools I use.
You get more specs, more plans, more code, more tests. If you're getting excuses, something's wrong.
There isn't any social brainwork. I'm using natural language to build things, not engaging in social discourse.
Nor should they! They're not people, but they're designed to reach goals. If you set a goal (explicitly or implicitly) that you want a social conversation, they'll try to satisfy (and do poorly).
With a car, when I turn the steering wheel a quarter turn, the car immediately starts to turn at a known rate (I can't quantify it, but my muscle memory knows it). With an LLM, if I ask it to "turn the car", my "steering wheel" is natural language. I have to spend effort to figure out how to convey the rate at which I want the car to turn, and because the LLM has a noticeable delay, I also need to preemptively include some language anticipating how the expected rate should feel and what to do if it doesn't seem to feel right. And then the next time I say the same thing, the LLM decides to steer the car a bit differently anyways.
I'm sure the first farmers said that when they drove a tractor. "I can't feel the land", but the ones that got over that could do 10x yield. The "feel" just moves up the stack.
Why would you use an LLM to steer a car? That doesn't make any more sense than heating a water pressure chamber to drive a piston to steer a car. Wrong tool.