> to write every line for basic stuff you've done 1000x before
There are ways to avoid writing basic stuff you've done 1000x before that are better than LLMs though...
Put it in a well-thought-out function or package or other form of shared/reusable code. You can validate it, spend the time to make sure it covers your edge cases, optimize it, test it, etc. so that when you go to reuse it you can have confidence it will reliably do what you need it to do. LLM-generated code doesn't have that.
(When you think about how LLMs are trained and work, you realize they are actually just another form of code reuse, but one where there are various transformations to the original code that may or may not be correct.)
Where LLMs shine for coding is in code-completion. You get the LLM output in little chunks that you can immediately review correctly and completely, in the moment: "yeah that's what I want" or "no, that's no good" or "ok, I can work with that". Not surprising, since predicting completion is what LLMs actually do.
There are ways to avoid writing basic stuff you've done 1000x before that are better than LLMs though...
Put it in a well-thought-out function or package or other form of shared/reusable code. You can validate it, spend the time to make sure it covers your edge cases, optimize it, test it, etc. so that when you go to reuse it you can have confidence it will reliably do what you need it to do. LLM-generated code doesn't have that.
(When you think about how LLMs are trained and work, you realize they are actually just another form of code reuse, but one where there are various transformations to the original code that may or may not be correct.)
Where LLMs shine for coding is in code-completion. You get the LLM output in little chunks that you can immediately review correctly and completely, in the moment: "yeah that's what I want" or "no, that's no good" or "ok, I can work with that". Not surprising, since predicting completion is what LLMs actually do.