No Sloptober

October has arrived with a challenge: abstain from all LLM-based tools. This endeavor is a personal test, not a judgment on others. It encourages individuals to develop a nuanced understanding of LLMs, discerning their strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to reduce or eliminate LLM usage, measure its impact on team velocity, incident rates, costs, and identify potential savings or risk mitigations.

This experiment can also be approached through the "iron triangle" principle of software development - understanding where gaps in knowledge and capabilities exist and whether delegation is appropriate. Some tasks may not hold value and could be automated cheaply and quickly. The source also mentions a respectful boundary around the use of language translation tools, suggesting they are a uniquely human exception to the AI rule.

However, this pro-human use is left to individual discretion, with a reminder that professional human translation remains crucial for accuracy. Lastly, the term "meat proxy" refers to individuals who rely on chatbots for work conversations, applying little thought or minimal editing to the output, which is deemed disrespectful.