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Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

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Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#211

Post by bparsons »

This is a problem that is not unique to software engineering, and predates LLMs.

Large organizations are increasingly made up of technical specialists who are very good at their little corner of the operation. In the past, you had employees present at firms for 20+ years who not only understand the systems in a holistic way, but can recall why certain design or engineering decisions were made.

There is also a demographic driver. The boomer generation with all the institutional memory have left. Gen-X was a smaller cohort, and was not able to fully absorb that knowledge transfer. What is left are a lot of organizations run by people under the age of 45 working on systems where they may not fully understand the plumbing or context.

Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#212

Post by raincole »

trjordan wrote: post #43

LLMs absolutely produce reams of hard-to-debug code. It's a real problem. But "Teams that care about quality will take the time to review and understand LLM-generated code" is already failing. Sounds nice to say, but you can't review code being generated faster than you can read it. You either become a bottleneck (defeats the point) or you rubber-stamp it (creates the debt). Pick your poison. Everyone's trying to bol…

> You either become a bottleneck (defeats the point)

How...?

When I found code snippets from StakcOverflow, I read them before pasting them into my IDE. I'm the bottleneck. Therefore there is no point to use StackOverflow...?

Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#213

Post by righthand »

efitz wrote: post #208

I think I disagree with the premise. If the assertion is, I want to use non-LLM methods to maintain LLM-generated code, then I agree, there is a looming problem. The solution to making LLM-generated code maintainable involves: 1) Using good design practices before generating the code, e.g. have a design and write it down. This is a good practice regardless of maintainability issues because it is part of how you get g…

You’re suggesting software design principles to a world where people are trying to escape having to learn (anything) software design principles. The only thing Llm users largely want is to say “computer do thing”.

Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#215

Post by FrustratedMonky »

pixl97 wrote: post #99
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debt has always existed, and "LLMs is making it worse" Yes, I think point is, LLM's are making it 'a-lot' worse. And then compounding that will be in 10 years when no Senior Devs were being created, so nobody will be around to fix it. Extreme of course, there will be dev's, they'll just be under-water, piled on with trying to debug the LLM stuff.

>they'll just be under-water, piled on with trying to debug the LLM stuff. So in that theory the senior devs of those days will still be able to command large salaries if they know their stuff, in specific how to untangle the mess of LLM code.

Good point. Maybe it will circle around, and a few devs that like to dig through this stuff will probably be in high demand. And it will be like earlier cycles when, for example only, a few people really liked working with bits and Boolean logic and they were paid well.

Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#216

Post by CliffStoll »

rhetocj23 wrote: post #81
bob1029 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that there is a strong correlation between programmers who don't think that there needs to be a model/theory, and those who are reporting that LLMs are speeding them up. I have some anecdotal evidence that suggests that we can accomplish far more value-add on software projects when completely away from the computer and any related technology. It's amazing how fast the code goes when you know exactly what…

"I have some anecdotal evidence that suggests that we can accomplish far more value-add on software projects when completely away from the computer and any related technology. It's amazing how fast the code goes when you know exactly what you want" Yeah its the same reason why demand for pen and paper still exists. Its the absolute best way for one to think and get their thoughts out. I can personally attest to this…

Strongly agree: scribbling requirements, process maps, and block diagrams goes a long way to understanding what needs to be done, as well as getting us to think through what'll be the easy parts and pinch-points.

Goes back to Fred Brooks' Mythical Man-Month: Start with understanding the requirements; then design the architecture. Only after that, begin programming.

Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#217

Post by patrickmay »

dbuxton wrote: post #7

I think this is a relative succinct summary of the downside case for LLM code generation. I hear a lot of this and as someone who enjoys a well-structured codebase, I have a lot of instinctive sympathy. However I think we should be thinking harder about how coding will change as LLMs change the economics of writing code: - If the cost of delivering a feature is ~0, what's the point in spending weeks prioritizing it?…

> However I think we should be thinking harder about how coding will change as LLMs change the economics of writing code: - If the cost of delivering a feature is ~0, what's the point in spending weeks prioritizing it?

Writing code and delivering a feature are not synonymous. The time spent writing code is often significantly less than the time spent clarifying requirements, designing the solution, adjusting the software architecture as necessary, testing, documenting, and releasing. That effort won't be driven to 0 even if an LLM could be trusted to write perfect code that didn't need human review.

Re: Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code

#219

Post by rAum »

donatj wrote: post #71

A friend was recently telling me about an LLM'd PR he was reviewing submitted by a largely non-technical manager where the feature from the outside entirely appeared to work, but actually investigating the thousands of lines of generated code, it was instead hacking their response cache system to appear to work without actually updating anything on the backend. It took a ton of effort on his part to convince his mana…

lol you should absolutely merge it and go with it in such cases, just collect evidence first to have enough deniability and enjoy the show. You can tell a child not to do the thing over and over or just accept it will very quickly learn for their life that touching hot oven is not a smart thing to do. With so much AI hype induced brainrot seems for certain individuals the only antitode is to make them feel direct consequences of their false beliefs. Without feedback loop there is no learning occurring at all.

More dangerous thing is such idiot managers can judge you by their lens of shipping LLM garbage they didn't applied in reality to see consequences, living in fantasy due to lack of technical knowledge. Of course it directly leads to firing people and adding more tasks/balloning expectation on leftover team who are force trapped to burn out and be replaced as trash as that makes total sense in their world view and "evidence".

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