Don't Let AI Write For You: Your Thoughts Are More Interesting

2025-05-04

The author criticizes the overuse of large language models (LLMs) for writing by students and researchers, arguing that LLM-generated text is verbose, insipid, and lacks originality. He posits that using LLMs isn't about honesty or fairness, but stems from a misconception that LLMs improve efficiency or writing quality. The author emphasizes the value of expressing personal thoughts, contrasting LLM-generated text—a mere pastiche of existing content—with the unique insights and personal experiences inherent in human writing. Using his teaching and reviewing experiences as examples, he illustrates the drawbacks of LLM writing and conducts an experiment to show how LLM-generated text lacks depth and creativity. Ultimately, the author urges readers to reject LLM writing and express their unique thoughts with their own voice.

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Development Originality

From Hand-Coding HTML to Zola: My Blog Migration Journey

2025-02-12

Clayton Ramsey shares his experience migrating his personal blog from hand-coded HTML to the Zola static site generator. Initially, he found hand-coding HTML manageable, but the repetitive tasks of handling math formulas (using MathML), code highlighting, and maintaining navigation bars became overwhelming. He switched to Zola, leveraging a Python script to convert LaTeX to MathML, ultimately automating the deployment process. While encountering challenges with GitHub Actions' YAML configuration, he found the migration significantly improved efficiency and lowered the barrier to writing new posts.

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Development blog migration