My experience with LLM-assisted tools in software development

It’s no secret that I was highly skeptical of LLM-s. Cool, there is this new thing that can spit out plausible text and create cheap-looking images and videos, resulting in a lot of low-quality content being shared. It was also a huge disappointment to see a human-written post that’s excellent, only for it to be cheapened with a generic AI-generated image as the cover. 1 A few years into this wild ride, I have partially changed my view because some people have figured out how to make LLM-s actually useful, and I like that part a lot. Not the part where the industry is killing my hobby and increasing energy usage worldwide, but there are some parts that I genuinely find useful. What changed? If you’re not that excited about LLM-based tools or have otherwise strong opinions on them, then please read the final words first. Background I hate the online discourse around LLM-s, or “AI”, or now that I think about it, everything. Everyone has their own opinion that they hold as absolute…