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0 pointsnottorp1y ago0 comments

> One of my friends wanted a bio on a certain musician and asked ChatGPT.

I use ChatGPT (or Gemini) instead of web searches. You can blame the content and link farms that are top of the search results, and the search engines focusing on advertising instead of search, because we're the product.

Why your friend doesn't know about wikipedia is another matter, if i wanted a generic info page about some topic i'd go directly there. But if i wanted to know if Bob Geldof's hair is blue, I might ask a LLM instead of reading the whole wikipedia page.

I also ask LLMs for introductory info about programming topics i don't know about, because i don't want to go to google and end up on w3schools, geeksforgeeks and crap like that.

I don't really trust LLMs for advanced programming topics, you know, what people pay me for. But they're fine for giving me a function signature or even a small example.

0 comments

651y ago

You can use source material instead of LLMs for all of this.

"Is Bob Geldof's hair blue?" -> Search for Bob Geldof -> Look at images of Bob Geldof.

Intro programming topics can be found at the documentation of the website. Your searching query might be "[programming topic] getting started" and usually if it's a package or a tool there will be documentation. If you want good documentation on web dev stuff that isn't w3schools or geeksforgeeks you can use MDN documentation.

Or, if you really want a general overview there's probably a YouTube video about the topic.

Additionally appending "reddit" to a search will give better results than SEO junk. There are always ways to find quality information via search engines.

nottorpOP1y ago

> "Is Bob Geldof's hair blue?" -> Search for Bob Geldof -> Look at images of Bob Geldof

Assuming I get images of Bob Geldof. More likely the first page will be pinterest login-required results.

> there's probably a YouTube video about the topic.

Life's too short to watch talking heads about ... you know, WRITING code ...

> can be found at the documentation of the website

Seriously? Maybe for the top 500 npm packages. Not for the more obscure libraries that may have only some doxygen generated list of functions at best.

651y ago

> Assuming I get images of Bob Geldof. More likely the first page will be pinterest login-required results.

You do realize Google/Bing/DDG/Kagi all have an Images tab, right? Come on.

> Life's too short to watch talking heads about ... you know, WRITING code ...

If I want a high level overview of what the thing even is, a YouTube video can be useful since there will be explanations and visual examples. You can read documentation as well. For example, if I want a slower overview of something step by step, or a talk at a conference about why to use this thing, YouTube can be helpful. I was just looking at videos about HTMX this weekend, hearing presentations by the authors and some samples. That's not saying if I actually use the thing I won't be reading the documentation, it's more just useful for understand what the thing is.

> Seriously? Maybe for the top 500 npm packages. Not for the more obscure libraries that may have only some doxygen generated list of functions at best.

How do you expect your LLM to do any better? If you're using some obscure package there will probably be documentation in the GitHub README somewhere. If it's horrible documentation you can read the Typescript types or do a code search on GitHub for examples.

This is all to say that I generally don't trust LLM output because I have better methods of finding the information LLMs are trained on. And no hallucinations.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsnottorp1y ago0 comments

> One of my friends wanted a bio on a certain musician and asked ChatGPT.

I also ask LLMs for introductory info about programming topics i don't know about, because i don't want to go to google and end up on w3schools, geeksforgeeks and crap like that.

I don't really trust LLMs for advanced programming topics, you know, what people pay me for. But they're fine for giving me a function signature or even a small example.

0 comments

651y ago

You can use source material instead of LLMs for all of this.

"Is Bob Geldof's hair blue?" -> Search for Bob Geldof -> Look at images of Bob Geldof.

Or, if you really want a general overview there's probably a YouTube video about the topic.

Additionally appending "reddit" to a search will give better results than SEO junk. There are always ways to find quality information via search engines.

nottorpOP1y ago

> "Is Bob Geldof's hair blue?" -> Search for Bob Geldof -> Look at images of Bob Geldof

Assuming I get images of Bob Geldof. More likely the first page will be pinterest login-required results.

> there's probably a YouTube video about the topic.

Life's too short to watch talking heads about ... you know, WRITING code ...

> can be found at the documentation of the website

Seriously? Maybe for the top 500 npm packages. Not for the more obscure libraries that may have only some doxygen generated list of functions at best.

651y ago

> Assuming I get images of Bob Geldof. More likely the first page will be pinterest login-required results.

You do realize Google/Bing/DDG/Kagi all have an Images tab, right? Come on.

> Life's too short to watch talking heads about ... you know, WRITING code ...

> Seriously? Maybe for the top 500 npm packages. Not for the more obscure libraries that may have only some doxygen generated list of functions at best.

This is all to say that I generally don't trust LLM output because I have better methods of finding the information LLMs are trained on. And no hallucinations.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse