> Use an LLM to develop your comprehension. Then communicate the best you can in your own words, then use an LLM to tweak that language. If you’re struggling to convey your ideas with someone, use an LLM more aggressively and mention that you used it. This makes it easier for others to see where your understanding is and where there are disconnects.
> There needs to be understanding when contributing to Django. There’s no way around it. Django has been around for 20 years and expects to be around for another 20. Any code being added to a project with that outlook on longevity must be well understood.
> There is no shortcut to understanding. If you want to contribute to Django, you will have to spend time reading, experimenting, and learning. Contributing to Django will help you grow as a developer.
> While it is nice to be listed as a contributor to Django, the growth you earn from it is incredibly more valuable.
> So please, stop using an LLM to the extent it hides you and your understanding. We want to know you, and we want to collaborate with you.
This advice is 95% not actionable and 100% not verifiable. It's full of hand-wavy good intentions. I understand completely where it's coming from, but 'trying to stop a tsunami with an umbrella' is a very good analogy - on one side, you have the above magical thinking, on the other, petaflops of compute which improve their reasoning capabilities exponentially.
(Again, I must emphasize that this is not telling people to not use LLMs, any more than telling people to wear a seatbelt would somehow be telling them to not drive a car.)
"Spending your tokens to support Django by having an LLM work on tickets is not helpful. You and the community are better off donating that money to the Django Software Foundation instead."
Reading beyond the first line makes it clear that the problem is a lack of comprehension, not LLM use itself. Quoting:
> This isn’t about whether you use an LLM, it’s about whether you still understand what’s being contributed.