Well, technically, yes. You’re right. But they’re a specific, narrow type of neural network, while I was thinking of the broader class and more traditional applications, like data analysis. I should have been more specific.

That’s only part of the problem. Yes, JavaScript is a fragmented clusterfuck. Typescript is leagues better, but by no means perfect. Still, that doesn’t explain why the LLM can’t recall that I’m using Yarn while it’s processing the instruction that specifically told it to use Yarn. Or why it tries to start editing code when I tell it not to. Those are still issues that aren’t specific to the language.

But it still manages to fuck it up.

I’ve been experimenting with using Claude’s Sonnet model in Copilot in agent mode for my job, and one of the things that’s become abundantly clear is that it has certain types of behavior that are heavily represented in the model, so it assumes you want that behavior even if you explicitly tell it you don’t.

Say you’re working in a yarn workspaces project, and you instruct Copilot to build and test a new dashboard using an instruction file. You’ll need to include explicit and repeated reminders all throughout the file to use yarn, not NPM, because even though yarn is very popular today, there are so many older examples of using NPM in its model that it’s just going to assume that’s what you actually want - thereby fucking up your codebase.

I’ve also had lots of cases where I tell it I don’t want it to edit any code, just to analyze and explain something that’s there and how to update it… and then I have to stop it from editing code anyway, because halfway through it forgot that I didn’t want edits, just explanations.

I can envision a system where an LLM becomes one part of a reasoning AI, acting as a kind of fuzzy “dataset” that a proper neural network incorporates and reasons with, and the LLM could be kept real-time updated (sort of) with MCP servers that incorporate anything new it learns.

But I don’t think we’re anywhere near there yet.

I would argue that without consistent and enforced type hinting, dynamically typed languages offer very little benefit from type-checking at runtime. And with consistent, enforced type hinting, they might as well be considered actual statically typed languages.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing. Properly configured Python development environments basically give you both, even if I’m not a fan of the syntax.

Hasn’t been updated since 2018. Does it still work?

Oh, I know you can, but it’s optional and the syntax is kind of weird. I prefer languages that are strongly typed from the ground up and enforce it.

Python is easy, but it can also be infuriating. Every time I use it, I’m reminded how much I loathe the use of whitespace to define blocks, and I really miss the straightforward type annotations of strong, non-dynamically typed languages.

There’s inevitably going to be some rebounding from this. It’s probably true that the large language models these companies are betting their businesses on can do some of the things entry-level grads do, but we’ve already seen several of them fail because their MBAs didn’t realize that just barfing out code is only one part of what developers do.

Source: Am developer, currently working with LLMs and related tech, none of which would be able to get anywhere without someone like me doing the work.

I’m in a similar boat, except I’m waiting to find out if my multinational will be willing to move me. I’m the lead developer, admin, product owner, and architect for a very publicly-facing web presence for my company, so I’m hoping they’ll be willing to in order to keep me happy.

And if they won’t, I’m going to be applying for similar jobs abroad the moment I know.

It’s not just for me. My son is trans and my daughter is gay. I have to get them both out of here before the ovens start firing up.

If you get the impression that at this point I believe the U.S. is a lost cause, you’re correct. If we make it to the 2026 elections intact, the elections are valid, and Democrats sweep, I’ll be extremely surprised.

Once again, it’s not deportation. When a U.S. citizen is forcibly transported to another country, it’s kidnapping and human trafficking.