Programming With LLMs Has Become So Powerful

This is already common knowledge at this point, but large language models have changed the programming game so incredibly, you no longer need to write code by hand to build an entire software ecosystem. If you are a novice and are not quite familiar with programming or computers, then your LLM-generated code will probably be what's called "slop," likely operating through the highest degree of inefficiency and poor quality. However, if you are experienced (even just a little) with something like Python or PHP, you can be very specific in your instructions to the LLM, and create exactly the program you want with all of the precise specifications, requirements, and constraints met.

Having experimented with LLMs for programming and system administration quite a bit, it is clear that if you give the LLM vague/broad instructions, it will simply have too much freedom and will therefore produce extremely sub-optimal code (whether it be because it's structured poorly, uses extremely inconsistent styles/methods of achieving an outcome, or just massively overcomplicates things and adds tons of unnecessary comment lines). If you narrow the parameters and be very specific and strict, clearly defining the requirements/criteria and constraints, you'll get a much more ideal result. Naturally, this may sometimes require long and smart prompting, but compared to hand-writing all of the code yourself, you will still certainly save much time, and time is invaluable. When done right, LLMs can achieve outstanding and impressive results in programming far faster than humans manually could. When done wrong, you're (often) opening a world of inefficiency, bloat, inconsistency, and potential security holes. This has become apparent to many, but is still worth discussing.

Much of the programming I do today is largely driven/assisted by LLMs (though, for serious programs, I do review the code manually, or at the very least the general organization/structure of it to have a good understanding). Why wouldn’t I want to save time?