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If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

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Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#281

Post by swiftcoder »

meindnoch wrote: post #278
swiftcoder wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who pushed ~4x the median PRs on my team before LLMs were a thing, I kind of think the problem here is PRs as a concept. Code review doesn't scale to prolific humans, it definitely can't scale to agents. And the exact same things you would need to safely give up on PRs for human developers (auto-formatters, linters, comprehensive end-to-end tests, continuous deployment pipelines, etc), are also things that…

Well, it's either: 1. Your skills are >2 standard deviations above everyone else's. 2. You're fast at producing a lot of half-baked garbage, and your coworkers are too shy to confront you, so they just try to ignore it. (one of these scenarios is much more likely)

Are PRs honestly helping with either case? Either you severely rate-limit your high-performers, or you drown everyone else in review, and both outcomes are bad for the overall team

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#282

Post by nkrisc »

bandrami wrote: post #236
LandR wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! All my experience in trying to hire developers has been wading through an endless stream of people who were just useless. Me: I want to represent a 2d grid, what data structure should we use? Them: A string? This was someone applying for senior engineer. Others I've had filled their CV with SQL related acronyms. But couldn't explain what a foreign key was and then stubbornly insisted that at their current corp…

I have a question I usually ask which is "How would you convert a Julian yyyy-ddd date string to a military yyyy-mm-dd date string?" (I explain how a Julian date works if they aren't familiar with it.) The answer that almost guarantees I'll hire you is "there's got to be a library function for that, so I look in the manual". Almost as good is somebody whiteboarding how they'd convert ddd to mm-dd (and then account fo…

> I get a disturbing number of people who say things like "I would communicate with the person asking for this to see what they're really intending blah blah"

Sounds like they know this question is a “gotcha” question but just misinterpreted which direction you were going with it.

Some will ask a question like this expecting you to treat it like a puzzle and outline how you’d solve it as-is; others ask it as a way to probe how you’ll deal with strange or misguided requests (the case you noted as disturbing); and others yet will ask it to see how you’d practically solve it (your intention).

Seems like a bad interview question without context regarding kind of answer you’re looking for.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#283

Post by jagged-chisel »

dust-jacket wrote: post #260
swiftcoder wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who pushed ~4x the median PRs on my team before LLMs were a thing, I kind of think the problem here is PRs as a concept. Code review doesn't scale to prolific humans, it definitely can't scale to agents. And the exact same things you would need to safely give up on PRs for human developers (auto-formatters, linters, comprehensive end-to-end tests, continuous deployment pipelines, etc), are also things that…

> Code review doesn't scale to prolific humans I've worked with people who consider themselves 'prolific humans'. Someone always has to tidy upp later, and its never them

> … and its never them

IME, it’s because they lack the experience to have the Taste one develops as a senior engineer. “This works, and is somewhat understandable” is as far as they get. Little to no understanding of how this solution could fit better in the codebase.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#284

Post by KerrickStaley »

A somewhat related experience: I asked for advice on Twitter about something and got two unhelpful AI-generated responses (from accounts I have never heard of / don’t follow) and no human responses. The thing is that I already asked multiple frontier AIs the same question and didn’t get a satisfying answer. I specifically went to Twitter because AI did not have the answers I was looking for. Providing an AI answer to a human question assumes that the asker hasn’t already done their homework and tried asking an AI.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#285

Post by juanre »

hathym wrote: post #252
juanre wrote: post #250

A couple of weeks ago I essentially failed the Turing test (took to be an AI). I found it a bit annoying, so I built Possibly Made By A Human. It tracks your keyboard use (not the content, ms between keystrokes etc) and produces a signature for you. It can of course be spoofed, but that also takes some effort. Actually made by a human, signature: https://possiblymadebyahuman.com/7PuEdZs1i1

a solution waiting for a chrome extension :)

I wrote it! I just haven't told anyone yet (nor tested it :-) This is a fun side-project, I don't have much time to play with it.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/possiblymadebyahuma...

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#286

Post by bluefirebrand »

keithnz wrote: post #29

More and more I'm generating AI emails, often to people outside the company and often to do with technical issues / integrations we have / APIs. So far I don't think the people I'm emailing are really using AI as human responses are, well, lacking. What would be great is new email conventions for different communication pathways. Human -> Human (think we have this sorted) AI -> Human AI -> AI If you are doing AI -> H…

If you are trying to do AI -> Human communication you should be publicly flogged. Don't waste people's time with garbage you can't be bothered to write

Just send them the prompt instead, let them see how little effort you care to place into communicating with them

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#287

Post by Tade0 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #281
meindnoch wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's either: 1. Your skills are >2 standard deviations above everyone else's. 2. You're fast at producing a lot of half-baked garbage, and your coworkers are too shy to confront you, so they just try to ignore it. (one of these scenarios is much more likely)

Are PRs honestly helping with either case? Either you severely rate-limit your high-performers, or you drown everyone else in review, and both outcomes are bad for the overall team

The latter has an easy fix: the perpetrator is not allowed to take new work while there are pending review comments left unaddressed.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#288

Post by sdevonoes »

andai wrote: post #223
niuzeta wrote: post #34

A very prolific coworker who fully embraced claude has inflicted the team with a flood of AI-generated PRs. About six months later, it is his frequent bemoaning at the standup that their PR don't get reviewed, languishing in inattention. I don't think anyone - including myself - _intentionally_ avoid his PRs. It's just that he doesn't make it easy for the team to look at. This single headline perfectly captures what…

I often hear people say lately, "why should I bother to read this, if you didn't even think it was worth writing?" I've been thinking about this in art. Is it the end result that matters, or the process of creating it? I once saw a hideous sculpture. Didn't like it at all. Then the video zoomed and I saw that the whole thing (quite massive) had been hand-built out of individual toothpicks, and suddenly I thought it w…

Your boss cares only about the end result. Good engineers care about the process too

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#289

Post by whstl »

dust-jacket wrote: post #260
swiftcoder wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who pushed ~4x the median PRs on my team before LLMs were a thing, I kind of think the problem here is PRs as a concept. Code review doesn't scale to prolific humans, it definitely can't scale to agents. And the exact same things you would need to safely give up on PRs for human developers (auto-formatters, linters, comprehensive end-to-end tests, continuous deployment pipelines, etc), are also things that…

> Code review doesn't scale to prolific humans I've worked with people who consider themselves 'prolific humans'. Someone always has to tidy upp later, and its never them

That's such bullshit.

I've managed some incredibly prolific developers and some very slow ones, and the prolific ones are pretty much always the ones more available, more willing to fix things, more willing to take feedback.

And also: they make less mistakes because their skills are sharp. This anecdote comes to mind: https://austinkleon.com/2020/12/10/quantity-leads-to-quality...

If you have to constantly rationalize performance differences by demeaning others, this says more about you than the prolific people.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#290

Post by skydhash »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #264
swiftcoder wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who pushed ~4x the median PRs on my team before LLMs were a thing, I kind of think the problem here is PRs as a concept. Code review doesn't scale to prolific humans, it definitely can't scale to agents. And the exact same things you would need to safely give up on PRs for human developers (auto-formatters, linters, comprehensive end-to-end tests, continuous deployment pipelines, etc), are also things that…

I have always considered Kent Beck understood this the best, the scaling for code reviews as you go to reduced release timeframes is to pair program, that brings the number of people reviewing it down but also increases the understanding for the reviewer. Comprehensive end to end tests are more a replacement for manual quality assurance for regressions. I am not sure there is a good analogue for reviews in the AI wor…

No need to pair program, you can always send a message to your colleague about the design of the upcoming code, especially if it’s going to impact them or if it’s an area that they’re more familiar with. Waiting till a PR for feedback is wrong IMO.

Code review is not for feedback, it’s for ensuring quality (many eyes on the output) and have a shared involvement in the evolution of the code. The time for feedback is earlier, once you have an idea of the solution.

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