TLDR: LLMs are okay at coding, but at scale they build jumbled messes. I’ve scaled back my use of AI when coding and gone back to using my brain and pen and paper.A few months ago I needed to build a new infrastructure for my SaaS, as the current PHP+MySQL combo was not fit for purpose anymore. I was excited about the opportunity to make the most of all the new LLMs I’d been playing with, so I set aside my SWE hat and I started acting as a product manager, chatting with Claude about best practices, doing some research on my own and then coming up with a plan, after many back and forths. I ended up choosing Go+Clickhouse.
A salutary tale from Alberto Fortin, on working with LLMs as a software developer. It seems relatively clear can’t presently (if ever?) get them to develop code and use it sight unseen. Though a new generation of agentic coding technologies promise to do just that at significant scale.
