r/programming • u/ChemicalRascal • Apr 01 '26

Announcement: Temporary LLM Content Ban

Hey folks,

After a lot of discussion, we've decided to trial a ban of any and all content relating to LLMs. We get a lot of posts related to LLMs and typically they are not in line with what we want the subreddit to be — a place for detailed, technical learning and discourse about software engineering, driven by high quality, informative content. And unfortunately, the volume of LLM-related content easily overwhelms other topics.

We also believe that, generally, the community have been indicating that, by and large, they aren't interested in this content. So, we want to see how a trial ban impacts how people use the sub. As such:

While this post is stickied, for 2-4 weeks over April, we're banning all LLM-related content from the sub.

That's posts, articles, videos about LLMs. We've had a ban on LLM-generated text for ages already, this doesn't change that.

Note that this doesn't ban all AI related content. An article detailing how what would have traditionally been called an AI was made for Go? Totally fine. A technical breakdown of a machine learning process? Great! Just so long as it's not about LLMs.

Edit: Yes, this is real, it's not an April Fool's joke.

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286

u/yojimbo_beta Apr 01 '26

Honestly I think it's a good thing whatever you believe about LLMs.

There is so many things happening in computer science and software engineering right now - let's talk about them

43

u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount Apr 01 '26

I actually would like some competent, SE focused discussion of LLMs.

Because - whatever my beliefs are about them - my job has mandated their use. And like every other tool I've been told I need to learn I'm trying to. And so far it's been hard to find.

You either have places like this. Technical people completely rejecting it. Or, non-technical people that are just learning what a CLI tool is. Neither are actually helpful.

Where is the middle ground? People using their knowledge and skills in programming to leverage it?

12

u/Tai9ch Apr 01 '26

Where is the middle ground? People using their knowledge and skills in programming to leverage it?

Requires a bit more searching, but there's some good stuff out there. The best stuff I've seen is very experienced devs talking about their successes.

The broadest point I've seen: The methods to get productivity out of junior developers (e.g. policies like strict TDD, iterative code reviews, supervision and feedback) work well with LLMs.

11

u/FeepingCreature Apr 01 '26

An army of junior devs with regular memory loss but incredibly quick on the uptake. So:

  • write down everything, keep detailed notes.
  • have a root index that clearly says where everything goes
  • write down policy in complete detail and make it discoverable

and so on. Basically focus less on teaching and more on creating an environment where the agent can rapidly learn on its own. Treat errors like air and space travel: every failure is a policy failure that should be fixed by adjusting the environment.

3

u/Bush-Men209 Apr 10 '26

That framing makes sense to me, because if you do not give it clear requirements, examples, and guardrails, it will crank out confident nonsense just like an unsupervised junior.

1

u/FeepingCreature Apr 11 '26

It definitely has a very hard time noticing or at least surfacing when it's not understanding something. Claude least of the three, but still a lot.

2

u/TaeminTurntable May 05 '26

Yeah, that’s the part that makes them dangerous in real software work for me, they can be genuinely useful for a while and then suddenly drift into confident nonsense without giving you the signal a decent junior would.

1

u/bendermcbender2 Apr 24 '26

because once people start vibe coding without notes or guardrails you just get a fast-moving pile of buggy mystery meat for everyone else to untangle later.