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> LLMs can be good _domain experts_ when you build an LSP, but a) I wouldn't trust them blindly, and b) the quality of code is still very much your responsibility.

That's the feeling I have with these models as well. When I read about companies replacing devs due to AI I really hope its not actual coding/design jobs they're replacing. Unless they want to become evolutionary dead ends.

by jmalicki4 hours ago|

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> At some point the size of the project becomes too big for LLM to fit in its context window, and with the tendence to add code rather than remove, the bloat can explode really quickly.

While it's certainly worse with LLMs, humans, especially teams of humans, have the same issue. This is where being good with software architecture is a superpower for working with LLMs, since good separation of concerns and modularity help this immensely. LLMs can even often do this themselves if you are very harsh and critical about this in design review stages, but it requires the skill to be able to recognize it and to have a "vision" for the software architecture.

by popzxc4 hours ago|

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Yup. Basically, I have been combining both a manager and IC role for years now, which certainly helps working with LLMs: I can "delegate", and I know when to "intervene". It certainly is a skill, but the issue with LLMs is the confident voice you hear at the end of the turn: "the task is done, all is good"; and given that LLMs tend to praise its own code and tend to avoid global architecture reworks (I guess it's a training artifact), you need to understand the situation and resist hearing "nah, the architecture is fine, the rework is too much of work" phrased very convincingly. It's kind of peer pressure combined with both authority and glazing, which is a weirdly deceptive (to the point of being manipulative) mix.

I certainly enjoy working with humans much more than working with LLMs. Working with humans is usually "how can we get this done together", while working with LLMs is pretty much is "how can I make this model do what I need", which is something I don't like. An personal persistent thought I have now is not to transfer my relationship with LLMs to my relationship with human beings, and I don't really like it.

by tombert5 hours ago|

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I don't think I disagree with any of that.

TLA+ is a relatively simple language so I think it's a good candidate for this kind of stuff; most of the stuff in the generated LSP also just proxies straight to the official command line tools. It's certainly a simpler language than Rust, so I think it's easier for Claude to keep a higher percentage of stuff in context, and at least using the TLA+ bindings seems to work pretty well.

I haven't done it since my laptop has lots of RAM, but I suspect that I will likely edit the generated code to eat less at some point.