I suppose this was inevitable.
In the previous posts I made about LLMs, which I’ve condensed down to just three posts with audience focus, I spoke stridently and with great vigor against the usage of LLMs at all, essentially teetotalling.
I’ve re-read it, and I still stand by everything I wrote, which is why it remains up. But I realize I’ve been a bit one-sided. In my programming practice I try to hold pragma over dogma, and on further reflection I came to realize that I was being a bit dogmatic in my resistance.
I am definitely not an “AI drunkard”, but I would say that I am less a teetotaller now and more a “having a drink in moderation is probably ok.” I still have ethical misgivings about how we’ve introduced this technology, particularly the absurd greed-driven fervor that is spawning data-centers with little regard to the communities and various ecosystems. I still think that this technology should not belong in the hands of private companies, nor do I trust any of them to be responsible about its usage.
I still stand by every comment I made about the implicit harm it can induce on the learning process of a budding junior in their journey to becoming a competent senior.
HOWEVER.
In February or March, around the time that Anthropic released Claude 4.6, I tried out using it with a coworker while we were pairing. Previously I had experimented a little bit with Opus 4.3 to mild success. It was neat but still felt unreliable and stunted. Opus 4.6, on the other hand… well. I get it now.
More shortly.