One of the things you learn in many art classes as an adult is that the product is much less important than the process. Take pleasure in the process, and the outcome will take care of itself.
The artists I know draw and paint and sculpt (and since I know techie artists) “make” for the sheer pleasure of it.
Having said that, having programmed for fifty years, there’s a lot of boilerplate involved in programming. AI tools help one turn a human-language description of a problem and potential solutions into a partial solution in a matter of minutes.
One might ask: why is there so much boilerplate? Maybe our programming systems should seek to eliminate boilerplate by being more expressive?
To that, I agree. But one of the ways of being more expressive is using an expressive language to describe problems and possible solutions — and what is a coding-specific LLM if not that?
Of course, one can write buggy code in any language. The LLM does not free you from that, so walk through the output carefully, suggesting changes, asking for reasons of particular constructions. The LLM is also a pattern completer, so it will insert unnecessary, but frequently used things. The LLM has limited attention, so it may lose track of the project goal when down in the weeds.
