Absolutely. I love LLMs but the real insanity is thinking they are ready to be baked into professional products. I really want the technology to succeed because in certain circumstances they are really helpful. But when I hear Mercedes is putting ChatGPT into a car, or the support group that fired their workers and replaced them with AI (with predictable results) I just shake my head. This technology is not to be relied on without supervision and this whole endeavor is going to burst because everyone is racing to be the first to have it without considering the negatives.

I use it to help me code. I’ve been a professional for twenty-five years, but I can’t remember every best practice or anti-pattern. So I ask for some generic code and I almost always get back something totally wrong but it starts me on the right path and helps avoid the initial decision paralysis of trying to figure out the best approach. It’s not even always right about the best approach, but it probably does about as well as I do and a lot faster so I can find the mistake more quickly and find the better solution armed with the knowledge of why that was a mistake. It’s very useful.

But anyone thinking they can replace developers with AI is nuts. Maybe a slightly smaller junior developer headcount with more efficient seniors, but it’s not going to be a stark difference.