What LLMs revealed is how many people in our industry don’t like to code.
It’s intriguing that now they claim and showcase what they “built with Claude”, whereas usually that means they generated a PoC.
It’s funny, as people still focus on how they’re building, so it’s all about the code. And if that’s the message sent outside, together with the thought that LLMs are already better than “average coder Joe”, then the logical follow-up question is: why do we need those humans in the loop?
Not surprising if you’ve been in computing since before the dot-com boom.
In the 80s it was the finance industry that attracted all the yuppies because it was where the money was. Do you think any of those stock traders actually care about economics, supply chains or business development outside of it being a vehicle for them to make wads of cash? Of course not.
As soon as the internet demonstrated its financial potential, all the money-chasers looking for a career path became “web developers” and moved to Silicon Valley. Once smartphone app stores appeared, they all went into “app development.”
These people never cared about the technology, they just care about getting their retirement.
Actually caring about coding? That’s only for the real nerds.
There’s a guy in my niche showcasing his website “built with Claude”. Built in a couple weeks. Irks the hell out of me. Looks nice on the surface. Meanwhile, I’m building from scratch and spending half a year.
Why are you building your website? You need to do something specific? You can use AI. Make the site, use it, forget about it.
You want to learn new tools? You just like coding? You want to grow and maintain the app? Write it yourself. You will learn, have fun and end up with something you can maintain for long time.
Coding is not a race. Yes, people will make simple apps faster with AI but making something that works fast is not always the goal.
For what it’s worth, when they eventually raise the prices on it, you’d be the one not losing money for every line you write.
Except you can already download and run models on your local machine for free with ollama. Price raising might at least calm the AI craze with the normies though. Probably not with developers who know how to run LLMs locally.
Quality of output differs by a lot for local models, but I also think that local should be the way forward
*scratches neck …yall got anymore of them tokens?