Except the tokens you insert have meaning, and some yield better results than others. Not like a slot machine at all, really. Last I checked, those only have 1 possible input.

Ok so it's poker rather than a slot machine

Yes I accept this analogy!

Not really, it's not a zero-sum game. You're not competing against anything, you're working with something. It's just a tool that takes practice, has some variability and isn't free. Like most things in life. More like buying corn or having friends.

Poker takes practice, has variability and isn't free. In fact it's the only game I know of that's pointlessly boring without money on the table.

LLM workflow is competing with other ways of writing code. DIY, stack overflow, paired, offshored...

> pointlessly boring without money on the table.

I bought a bunch of poker chips and taught Texas Hold'em to my kids. We have a fantastic time playing with no money on the line, just winning or losing the game based on who wins all the chips.

Give them enough time and they'll realize they can trade poker chips for other things.

That’s fine if your expectations are consummate.

How's that different from a human developer? Give the same task to different developers and you'll get different levels of correctness and quality. Give the task to the same developer on different days and it is the same.

Its a lot faster to give a task to an ai agent than a developer. The agent is always at their desk, always listening, and will immediately prioritize whatever you tell it to do.

An ai agent always has capacity, does not have competing priorities, nor does it have ideas about what does or does not fall within their "scope of work".