@alecsargent@social.linux.pizza
2026-01-31 11:47 UTC
@82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe I'm lazy and to me it generally feels like less effort using a search engine. The amount if time figuring out what is wrong with the answer the LLM gave you could be spent actually learning the thing or at least skimming documentation to get to the answer directly.
That is not mentioning the way you described in the post that makes you feel like you have cheated or like you have a butler that that goes to the library and does your own homework.
In my opinion, even if it was harder doing it by yourself, it will get easier and easier to do that particular thing. I've found that I'm searching less for solutions online or at least I know better what to look for. Nonetheless I think there is nothing inherently wrong with the tool and is useful under some contexts.
Good post man!
Replies (2)
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@tiotasram@kolektiva.social 2026-01-31 11:56
@alecsargent@social.linux.pizza @82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe the reputable studies I've seen back this up that for serious work (or even probably these kinds of projects if amortized) the "productivity gains" are negative, even though subjectively they seem real.
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@tiotasram@kolektiva.social 2026-01-31 12:54
@alecsargent@social.linux.pizza @82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe here's the paper I was thinking of: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09089 There are a *ton* of low-quality studies that do things like "measure" productivity by asking developers how productive they were, or giving them toy problems to solve where there's no preexisting code and there's a known valid solution.