SmeLLMs
Various LLM Smells
241–250 of 312 posts
Re: Various LLM Smells
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs can generate code , but the quality of the code at scale is just not there currently by all important metrics such as security, maintainability, separation of concerns, etc. Today, it's a kind of chaos magic wherein you summon the beast and try your best to contain him, knowing that someone will probably die in the process. Sometimes literally. It's still a force multiplier in the right hands and domain, and age…
I'm tired as fuck of anti-ai zealots pretending like every human is a fucking paragon at programming. I've literally never seen Claude Code produce as bad of code as generated by humans. Literally never. Yet the anti-ai zealots pretend like humans never introduce a bug into a system. Only LLMs produce slop or take shortcuts or ignore tests or do incredibly dumb fucking shit. It's fucking ridiculous. As if The Daily W…
Is this comment directed at me? Where did you get an anti-AI sentiment from my comment?
Re: Various LLM Smells
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs can generate code , but the quality of the code at scale is just not there currently by all important metrics such as security, maintainability, separation of concerns, etc. Today, it's a kind of chaos magic wherein you summon the beast and try your best to contain him, knowing that someone will probably die in the process. Sometimes literally. It's still a force multiplier in the right hands and domain, and age…
I'm tired as fuck of anti-ai zealots pretending like every human is a fucking paragon at programming. I've literally never seen Claude Code produce as bad of code as generated by humans. Literally never. Yet the anti-ai zealots pretend like humans never introduce a bug into a system. Only LLMs produce slop or take shortcuts or ignore tests or do incredibly dumb fucking shit. It's fucking ridiculous. As if The Daily W…
I’d probably word it differently but I agree with much of the sentiment here. I’m also reminded of the stat where 93% of drivers rated themselves as above average.
Re: Various LLM Smells
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree this is the source of the polarization. Maybe it's part of it. I have been coding since about 1983 or so. I shipped high quality products that have been used by millions of people. From embedded software to desktop applications to distributed systems. I don't think I'm in the "don't understand what code should look like camp" (I mean you never know but the evidence seems to show that I do know what I'm doi…
I’ve seen people coding for 4 decades, thinking the same as you about themselves, and were bad coders. Unfortunately, nobody can tell you whether you’re good or bad without seeing your code. Your claims means nothing on the internet.
What about the buisness side of things that does not care for shiny code, but shipping things to make money?
That simple arcade game (without in game transactions) needs to be fun, that website that needs to attract visitors (but not sell them anything or handle sensitive data)?
They don't care about abstract code quality, they care if it works and useful.
So a good coder here means he or she could get to working results according to what the client wants fast. And those things likely make up the vast majority of written code. So no wonder AI gets adopted as it is a powerful tool here to be even faster.
Not all code runs in airplanes, handles financial transaction or sensitive user data - for this you need the best code possible and nothing vibe coded or quick and dirty hacks.
And oh wonder, it is possible to combine both. Because yes, websites often include financial transactions nowdays, but that part can and should be handled with care. People who move slow and check things. And then those who are quick to build things on top of it.
But I strongly object to dividing programmers absolutely in good and bad programmers, when the field is so big and the requirements not the same.
Some optimize in speed, some in quality. And yes, some are just bad in both. And some can do both - but they are very rare, in my experience.
Re: Various LLM Smells
#245> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.
This is true, but what is also true is that with each new generation of models (and not just for code generation) it becomes less and less true.
Re: Various LLM Smells
#246One Python one I hate is that it adds crazy amounts of newlines for no real readability gains. Instead of this: def add_three_ints(x: int, y: int, z: int) -> int: return x + y + z it will write: def add_three_ints( x: int, y: int, x: int, ): return x + y + z While it's always preferable to do this when you get either long or complex function signatures, Opus 4.7 and GPT 5.5 do this everywhere. When you combine it wit…
A code formatter like Black can handle that. It's there to enforce a single code style no matter what the contributors use, whether they are human or AI.
Re: Various LLM Smells
#247> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.
This is true, but what is also true is that with each new generation of models (and not just for code generation) it becomes less and less true.
IMO LLM writing hasn't significantly improved since maybe GPT4.
It still does the exact same "It's not x, it's actually y" tropes and many of the other common LLM smells.
Most LLM generated text is immediately discernible as such.
Re: Various LLM Smells
#248> The LLM generated writing obviously felt significantly better than my own writing. A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. What that means is that if you find yourself thinking of its output as significantly better than yours in a particular domain, there's a high chance that you are not equipped to judge that quality effectively.
> A general pattern for LLMs is that they look really good at things you are bad at. This is true for coding, too, which I think, to a large degree, might explain the polarized differences in opinions on HN about the quality of LLM-produced code. You have the 1. "AI produces code better than I could possibly write, one shots things it would take me days to do, and has made me 10X more productive!" camp, and you have…
The difference between prose, art and code is that we can define "good code" with deterministic tools. Not perfectly, but to a large degree.
Re: Various LLM Smells
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I can't fathom thinking that LLM writing is even remotely passable. People that think this should honestly read more. One book a month is hardly an aspirational goal. You don't even have to read Melville or Hemingway or Chaucer or Shakespeare, just pick up any popular NYT best seller, and it'll be significantly better than anything an LLM can generate.
I haven't used these things for writing recreationally for a while (since the Claude 3.X days), so my opinions might be outdated - but they definitely weren't bad - after all they had a huge library of witticisms to pull from, and like Stable Diffusion that pulls from master artists, so do LLMs from skilled writers. Pro writers did come up with an absolute dearth of interesting ideas, and there are mountains of skill…
Um. Perhaps 'pro writers did come up with an absolute crapload of interesting ideas' would be better writing than 'dearth', which means scarcity and famine?
I get that it sounds clever but that's the damn problem!
Re: Various LLM Smells
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we also saying it's acceptable to feed people junk because it's better than what they would cook? At some point you're just making bad excuses for false scarcity.
I think it's both true that most LLM writing ("writing") sucks and that it's better than what a lot of people can produce unassisted. Which to me doesn't mean that we should roll over and accept LLM output as a lesser evil... it just means that the bar is so low it might as well be in hell, and rapidly getting lower :')
It's nowhere close to good writing, but it's better than the dreck many self-published writers produce and sell - successfully.
But that's the real problem with LLMs. Culture is aspirational. It has a consistent goal - find the best, highlight it and distribute it so others can build on it.
LLMs are the opposite - produce as much of everything as possible at the lowest possible barely-acceptable-if-you're-lucky quality.
This was already a problem before LLMs. Mass market content farms - Kindle Unlimited, Wattpad, Spotify, social media in general - give everyone an equal voice, with mass popularity and "likes" as the only metric.
Now LLMs are automating the creation process, so everyone gets more of everything.
Except inspiration. Not so much of the "That's astounding, I wonder if I can learn from that and reach for something in that league."