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thinkingemote | on: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder
It's now almost certain that every submission about LLMs will be written (or assisted) by LLMs.

That this kind of writing puts a great number of us off is not important to many who seek their fortune in this industry.

I hear the cry: "it's my own words the LLM just assisted me". Yes we have to write prompts.

simonw | parent | next
My current policy on this is that if text expresses opinions or has "I" pronouns attached to it then it's written by me. I don't let LLMs speak for me in this way.

I'll let an LLM update code documentation or even write a README for my project but I'll edit that to ensure it doesn't express opinions or say things like "This is designed to help make code easier to maintain" - because that's an expression of a rationale that the LLM just made up.

I use LLMs to proofread text I publish on my blog. I just shared my current prompt for that here: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-pattern...

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WarmWash | parent
I think it is very fair to say that in the same way that LLM's have given english majors access to programming, LLMs have also given engineers access to clear communication.

I'm not shy to admit that LLMs even from 2 years ago could communicate ideas much better than me, especially for a general audience.

wibbily | root | parent | next
It’s not “clear communication” though. The prose that comes out of LLMs is awful - long, vapid paragraphs with distracting tropes. You can ask them to be concise but then they file down all the wrong bits of the sentence and lose meaning. There’s a reason people bother clocking it and complaining about it, it’s *bad*

It’s like everything else that AI can do - looks fine at a glance, or to the inexperienced, but collapses under scrutiny. (By your own admission you’re not a great communicator… how can you tell then?)

WarmWash | root | parent
>By your own admission you’re not a great communicator… how can you tell then?

Thankfully we don't have to know how to write well to enjoy a well written book.

troad | root | parent | next
> LLMs have also given engineers access to clear communication.

A lot of the time, the inability to express an idea clearly hints at some problem with the underlying idea, or in one's conceptualisation of that idea. Writing is a fantastic way to grapple with those issues, and iron out better and clearer iterations of ideas (or one's understanding thereof).

An LLM, on the other hand, will happily spit out a coherent piece of writing defending any nonsense idea you throw at it. Nothing is learnt, nothing is gained from such "writing" (for either the author or the audience).

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bonoboTP | root | parent
It's often warping the message or "snapping it to grid", taking off the edge, the unique insight. A lack of clear communication is much more a symptom of unclarity about the intended message, audience, prioritization etc. I don't doubt that you internally have a clear idea but sharing it requires thinking about the intended audience and the diff of their current state of knowledge and doubt and where you want to move their thinking. This is a much bigger part than knowing eloquent vocab and grammar tricks.

It doesn't come naturally to the more introverted type of person who cares about the object level problem and not whatever anyone else may know or doubt, I'll admit this. But slapping LLMs on it is not a great solution.