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I Don't Like LLMs

248 points · 277 comments · TangerineDream

  1. binlog · · focus · HN ↗
    Kinda funny that one of the biggest software engineering “influencers” of all time can’t host a blog that survives HN front page traffic. Maybe try LLMs Martin.

    He is of course entitled to his opinion on the topic, but I’m personally not going to put too much weight on it considering he hasn’t written software for a living in probably decades.

    1. tjwebbnorfolk · · focus · HN ↗
      I for one am excited to move past the whatever-martin-fowler-thinks era of infrastructure "best practices".

      Many of his ideas are trendy nonsense that have caused more harm than good. Ask anyone managing 150 enmeshed and intertwined microservices that could have run on a single computer

      1. tripleee · · focus · HN ↗
        I don't think he should hold responsibility for people misunderstanding and misapplying his ideas
    2. tomgp · · focus · HN ↗
      The post has nothing to do with writing software. It would have as much value if it were written by someone who'd never written a line of code in their life. It's about the social dimension of LLMs and how the personality they present is, for some of us, pretty grating.

      Martin is a good writer and (from what I've heard from those who've spent time with him) a lovely person which I think makes him well qualified to speak on the topic.

      1. sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
        But ... there is no "social dimension of LLMs" for me, they are just tools.
        1. tomgp · · focus · HN ↗
          I agree, they are just tools, but the way they are presented; taking natural language as their input and responding in kind strongly influences the way our brains react to them on a social level. That's what I mean by their social dimension.
          1. sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
            As I said in another comment, to me this seems like it must have a strong personality or psychological component of some kind. I'm really not trying to be condescending or anything, but I just simply do not experience that reaction. I know that I'm interacting with a computer program, I would have to actively pretend to experience this social reaction.

            I understand that many people seem to experience it totally differently.

    3. abkolan · · focus · HN ↗
      This is exactly what I thought, the irony is that there are Distributed Systems Patterns hosted on the same domain.

      It's a static site, slap in a Cloudflare for crying out loud.

      1. DanielHB · · focus · HN ↗
        > It's a static site, slap in a Cloudflare for crying out loud.

        I was about to say that, don't forget your cache-control headers kids.

    4. stephbook · · focus · HN ↗
      I bet there's a proud "look how I host my simple website independently" blog post somewhere on his site, but alas — can't read anything.
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