> LLMs... impedes the ordinary process of theory-building
As I have said on here before, I actually really enjoy LLMs for code understanding precisely because they are imperfect.
They're good enough to point you in the right direction, they might even see something you miss, but you can't trust anything they say.
This forces you to deeply understand what you're looking at, and to constantly re-evaluate your mental model against the code you're reading.
This works the same way as "writing forces clarity".
I could get to the same place on my own - I did this for many years before LLMs existed - but I feel when an LLM works well it gets you to the same place (or better) quicker.
(as idiomatic code generators I have mostly found LLMs to be poor, even Opus, but this comment isn't about new code generation)
suprjami•52m ago
As I have said on here before, I actually really enjoy LLMs for code understanding precisely because they are imperfect.
They're good enough to point you in the right direction, they might even see something you miss, but you can't trust anything they say.
This forces you to deeply understand what you're looking at, and to constantly re-evaluate your mental model against the code you're reading.
This works the same way as "writing forces clarity".
I could get to the same place on my own - I did this for many years before LLMs existed - but I feel when an LLM works well it gets you to the same place (or better) quicker.
(as idiomatic code generators I have mostly found LLMs to be poor, even Opus, but this comment isn't about new code generation)