Let's progress technology.... AND ourselves!
From all my experience, reading about other's and just thinking about it all, I think I have found a way for us all to best benefit from what we are doing. This isn't revelation or anything crazy that someone else hasn't said. In fact I am willing to bet that there are many many, maybe every person who does this, people who already had this thought this and is acting on it right now. So to the noobs in the LLM space, here is my advice
READ
Just read
Step One: do not let your LLM take over what's going on in your codebase. Yes that means NO "vibe coding"
What I am suggesting is AI-assisted coding exclusively. Moving forward does not require something else learning everything whilst you get left behind. Not to mention, you have a crap ton to offer to the "AI". Like any good pair-programming session, you now have possible the best buddy you could find - simply because it is always available to you and at your request.
What you're going to do is prompt your LLM for smaller pieces of work. Instead of trying to get it to understand the greater context of what you are doing, break that work down into smaller and more manageable pieces of work where even using an AI chat will suffice in terms of maintaining context of your issue. Force the LLM to test it's own work in the form of unit tests and more than anything ever, READ EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF CODE THAT YOU ARE ADDING TO YOUR CODEBASE! This will trigger a cycle of learning for you by just performing those steps. You're not as involved as writing every aspect of the work, you do understand the goal and you don't need to know every aspect of the technologies you want to use - but you will!!
- Identify a small piece of work
- Use well structured prompts to achieve the expected output
- Prompt the LLM to unit test every aspect of this work
- Prompt the LLM to document all work done
- Read every single line of code you've copied or that an agent has written for you
- Ensure that it works!
- Commit that work
- Now you would have learnt something instead of being a bystander in your own work
Impact
The key here is ownership. You should not rely on the LLM/AI to own your work. It should rely on you as you are the "I" in AI. It is by your intelligence that you want to develop an idea for which the AI can assist you in getting there.
Everything grows on the back of that which came before it. This is just that. Make sure that when it is growing that so are you, because when you meet that happy medium and away from all the media hype, lack of integrity and dishonesty then you are bound to grow at a faster rate because you have the tools to do so now. This alone will enable you to have a far greater impact on what you are trying to achieve rather than just saying "I want this" and for it to appear out of thin air.
Confidence
The thing that stands out to me the most is the confidence with which people are now approaching technology, which is absolutely AMAZING!! I don't know about you, but even for me, when going into the unknown I have always tiptoed and worryingly proceeded only to get knocked back and think that I will never get there. This has been my experience in technology for myself, and also my experience when mentoring and helping others. There is a cautious approach, that whilst very admirable, can in certain situations not be inviting to someone because they don't know what's over that hump.
LLM's/AI have given everyone such a strong confidence that they now have a buddy who has been there and done that so they feel confident that they will be able to solve their issues no matter what. Whilst this statement might not hold true, it is the sentiment that is important. We should be trying our best and hardest to figure out solutions to modern problems, and if this is what it takes then I am fully on board. Venture, but learn. Try, then fail, then try again! You know I am going to say there is a middle ground to it, and there absolutely is, but the first step is having the confidence to approach the problem.
Using LLM's has expanded our reach so let's make the most of it and continue growing as developers and individuals.
Or just do what you want... lol
Something meaningful to close with
I thought this specific point was meaningful to me, I hope it has been to you too. Happy coding to all.
Love and Respect.