Interesting. How much would one have to pay you to stop using it?

Wondering what the use cases are (replace Google? Stack Overflow? etc).

I'd have to be paid probably at least $200/mo to stop using LLMs, they are a massive productivity boost for new projects and can replace google for simple things. As an example of replacing google (since I was writing C++ today and I haven't used it in ages):

me: is there an issue with passing "hello" to std::string

claude: Passing "hello" to a function expecting std::string is actually not an issue. C++ allows implicit conversion from string literals (like "hello") to std::string objects. This conversion is possible because std::string has a constructor that accepts a const char*, which is the type of string literals in C++.

If I type this question into google, I get this:

> some_function(std::string{"hello, world"}); is completely safe, as long as the function doesn't preserve the string_view for later use. The temporary std::string is destroyed at the end of this full-expression (roughly speaking, at this ; ), so it's destroyed after the function returns.

which doesn't really answer my question

As an example of simple project: I wanted to make an app with swiftUI, and I was able to just describe it to claude and have it give me the basic outlines of the app, and then improve it by iteratively asking claude for changes. Since I try to understand the output, this lead to me learning Swift and SwiftUI very quickly while also having a functional app within a few minutes.

Not arguing with your anecdote, but I expect LLMs to respond better with question type queries. Due to learning with books, I tend to use a keyword based to my search, and while reading I tend to collect technical terms as that how they will be referred most of the times. As for your example, I would type "c++ string literal std::string" as the query. Or I'd probably look for the documentation of std::string and seek the answer there.

Why? Because books, articles, and documentation often have related pieces of knowledge next to each other. It's like experiencing a whole journey instead of a short slideshow of pictures and video clips. Maybe that one specific answer is all you needed, but having the complete picture helps me refine my ideas better.

DuckDuckGo (What I use) is still useful for me. I either know the resources I'm looking for or I'm hoping someone has written about it. And the keyword based approach works great. It's like the index at the end of the book and it's table of content. You look at them to see if what you're seeking in in this book and where. It's just a short stop to the actual information.

String literals are not const char *, but const char[] in C++. They decay to a pointer when you pass them to the std::string constructor that takes one.

Its because you clicked on an unrelated google result about string views.

After you have taken any kind of C++ course, like learncpp.com, you dont have to look this stuff up anymore either.

So if LLMs are worth 200$/month to you, I would be very interested to see what actually learning the tools you use would be worth.

Do you take a course for every programming language you encounter?

I needed to edit a Ruby script the other day for a client, though I'm not at all a Ruby developer. ChatGPT was super helpful.

If I'm understanding correctly, your model here would instead be to enroll in a Ruby course, right? I think we must value our time very differently :)

Different people learn and approach problems differently.

I haven't taken any programming courses since high-school. But I also very rarely use search engines or LLMs when I'm writing code, even in a language that is new to me.

My preferred approach to learning new languages or frameworks is typically to begin by reading the documentation. If that is not a sufficient enough deep dive because I'm approaching some ginormous "ecosystem" language like Java where I need to learn tons of new concepts to get started then I'll reach for a textbook.

I have tried to get into using LLMs, especially because so many of my coworkers rave about them and they take it for granted that everyone else uses copilot or claude because they use them so much. But I don't find any utility in using copilot (or whatever the JetBrains equivalent is) and I've found that LLMs in general are so hit or miss for me that they have become my last resort for searching for information when all else has failed.

My coworkers often talk about how copilot is like a very advanced auto-complete and that it saves them having to look things up on StackOverflow and copy/paste from there ... but I can probably count the number of times that I've looked something up on StackOverflow over the past 10 - 15 years on one hand, and I've never copy/pasted any code .. not once, ever. Typically I find myself actively searching for solutions when I've come across some weird compiler or framework error that I've never seen before and need to search for that specific error string (in which case a traditional search engine beats an LLM 10/10 times).

> Do you take a course for every programming language you encounter?

Yeah often