Bad Taste in my Mouth

I'm very sick of the "AI doesn't have taste" narrative.

I'm extremely skeptical of people who claim to have good taste. Making the claim that AI doesn't have it is implying pretty strongly that you, the author, do.

I was sick of these people before AI, but I'm sick of them now, too.

For one thing: taste, and the tastemakers/gatekeepers who shill for it, are quick to point out that taste isn't trainable.

That is a bug, not a feature.

A developer who leans on their ineffably good taste can't make other developers better through their work. They can't mentor. They can't grow the software organization they work in as a result. That means they're a bottleneck.

I'm delusionally focused on the outputs of the software that I write. I care much less about the actual source code, and its "tastefulness". I care very much about what software allows me to do. Is it saving me time? Is it making my work simpler? Is it eliminating a problem for me?

These are the questions you should be asking about the software you use - LLM generated or not.

If Person A decides to use an LLM to write some software that solves their problem, then Person B comes along and declares that solution "in poor taste", Person B defaults to "wrong" in my book.

Colin Powell had a great maxim about military command: "The commander in the field is always right." If you rework that sentiment more generally, it reads: "The person closest to the problem has the best grasp of the problem."

Deriding someone else's solution with minimal context absolutely infuriates me.