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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22983 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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This is the kind of thinking that is impressed by calculators because it doesn't properly understand what's hard about some things.

Ironically I considered saying almost this exact thing in my above comment, but scratched it out as too antagonistic.

The high-school students and literature majors are impressed by LLMs ability to write code because they do not know enough about coding to know what parts are easy and what parts are hard.

Writing something that looks like netcode and maybe even compiles/runs is easy. (All you need is a socket, a for loop, a few if statements, a return case, and you're done) Writing netcode that is stable, functional, and secure enough to pass muster in the banking industry is hard. This is what i was gesturing towards with "Bouba" vs "Kiki" distinction. Banks are notoriously "prickly" about thier code because banking (unlike most of what Facebook, Amazon, and Google do) is one of those industries where the accuracy and security of information are core concerns.

Finally which LLM are you using to write FORTRAN? because after some brief experimentation niether Gemini nor Claude are anywhere close.

What do you imagine is the ratio just at banks between people writing performant net code and people writing crud apps? If you want to be an elitist about it then be my guest, but it's a completely insane standard. Honestly the people rolling out the internal llm tooling almost certainly outnumber the people doing the work you're describing.

I do not think that expecting basic competency is an "insane standard" or even that elitist. Stop making excuses for sub-par work and answer the question.

Which LLM are you using to write FORTRAN?

What sort of problem did you ask it to solve?

In your effort to declare LLMs as incapable programmers you're excluding 95%+ of the profession, not literature majors. not high school students. Professional programers with CS and SE degrees. All I've been asking is for you to acknowledge that. If your standard is quant on a hft desk then great for you. I'm sure you're an excellent programmer. You'll probably have a job for six months longer than me.

Are you trying to Bugs Bunny me?

You're the one who made the claim that 95%+ of employed programmers were literature majors with no background in computer science, not me.

The level of skill where LLMs are immediately useful, not the literature background. Obviously 95% of programmers don't have a literature background.

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