I don’t think LLMs are making you lazy

Here’s a topic that feels like it comes up every single day: someone will ask something like: Am I forgetting how to code? Are LLMs making me lazy? Nope! …At least, with some qualification: The people that I know that are successful with using LLMs to generate code are the ones that are dictating the patterns for how that code should be generated; the shape and structure of that code. They’re intervening when the LLM inevitably generates code that is functional but takes the wrong shape for their personal taste or organizational goals that were outside of the context of the LLM. They’re refining as they go, baking in these decisions in documentation and golden samples that LLMs can use to generate “better” code in the future (at least, for their idea of better.) Just because you’re not the one physically writing the code, doesn’t mean you should forget what good code looks like, if you already have strong taste in this area. Taste is like riding a bike: if you took a five year break…