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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

#341

Post by bluGill »

gwd wrote: post #335

"Don't expend more effort than they are" has actually long been a good principle to have internalized. Someone done only cursory research before asking a question on a mailing list? Give a cursory answer. Someone obviously spent hours trying to figure things out on their own? Give them a good chunk of your time. Someone on HN responding to you with single-sentence responses? Either don't respond, or respond in kind.…

> Someone on HN responding to you with single-sentence responses? Either don't respond, or respond in kind.

"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." - Blaise Pascal.

The length of the response doesn't indicate effort.

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

#342

Post by xpct »

mmmpetrichor wrote: post #146

I see this on my team. I honestly thought as engineers we'd all understand the limitations and nuance a bit better. Right now it's kind of a shit show. In addition to seeing my teammates open huge AI generated PRs and just asking for review without them having done much verification, I'm also seeing my teammates (smart ones whom I respect) use AI to "do code reviews". And we already have automated AI code reviews add…

Yep, it's bad. It's too easy to press the publish button without double-checking the outputs. Programming has always been about discipline, and now it's even more so.

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

#343

Post by whstl »

wccrawford wrote: post #320
whstl wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rationali…

I've worked with both types. Some prolific devs really do care, and are just really good at their job. Others are just trying to get code done, and don't care about quality. These are the types that are upset that their code gets rejected because their goal is advancement and money, and not doing a good job. FWIW, it's okay to care about both. But if you don't care about doing a good job, you're going to drive everyo…

Sure but if PRs get rejected, nobody has to "tidy upp (sic) later".

That's not prolific, that's just producing slop, with AI otherwise.

I'm just tired of developers pretending that low output is some sort of silver bullet for quality, and high-output is automatic slop. Neither are true. In 99% of cases, low output doesn't correlate with anything positive. High-output can naturally go either way, but slop doesn't make one "prolific".

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

#344

Post by xpct »

pevansgreenwood wrote: post #8

Was it Blaise Pascal who wrote: I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter. The argument that "using AI to generate text is disrespectful because it took no effort to write" misses the point. Respect for the recipient is measured by whether the message serves the recipient's needs, not how it is produced. Similarly, any errors are the senders responsibility, and not the fau…

Indeed, yet the sender is relying on me to find the errors.

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

#345

Post by xpct »

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 think we're too nice sometimes. If a coworker has been sending stuff to review that's taking me more time than for them to create, surely that's an opportunity to discuss this?

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

#346

Post by xpct »

treesknees wrote: post #22

This exactly reflects my feelings lately. I have a specific coworker who has gone somewhat overboard - every single code review, answer to any question on email or Teams, every new story, even their personal opinions during a design or ideas meeting, are all direct AI output with no massaging or human touch or review. They're working on planning out an upcoming project, and I just get verbose and long documents to re…

I hope he's thought out his next vocation, since he's so eager to automate his current one.

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

#347

Post by meta_gunslinger »

swiftcoder wrote: post #276
meta_gunslinger wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comprehensive end-to-end tests and CI can only attest to correctness , most engineers worth their salt won't review code only in regards to that aspect though.

In the bad old days before auto-formatters and linters, PRs were heavily used to enforce style guidelines. If we can enforce both style and correctness in our CI pipeline, what is actually left?

The functionally correct code could be rejected in PR for many reasons other than style:

1. Solution under-engineered/over-engineered. 2. Code is hard to read or comprehend. 3. Design/Archtecture lacking. 4. Principles decided upon by team not adhered to.

These are just some of the reasons I've rejected functionally correct code before.

To summarize, in any software engineering course you learn that there are other metrics used to evaluate code other than correctness (maintainability, readability, scalability, portability, efficiency etc.)

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

#348

Post by swiftcoder »

rightbyte wrote: post #331
neogodless wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By perpetrator you mean the person postponing performing a code review? Right? Right?! Otherwise you place all burden on high performers to not only push PRs but babysit the rest of the team. It's not an easy fix, especially with AI letting people cosplay as high performers.

> you place all burden on high performers If their PRs don't get merged they don't perform. It is trivial to overload your coworkers with secondary tasks due to your "high performance".

> If their PRs don't get merged they don't perform. It is trivial to overload your coworkers with secondary tasks due to your "high performance".

We're all aware that a huge portion of the busywork that makes a team successful is not actually reflected in their upwards-facing deliverables (increasing test coverage, improving infra, adopting new tools/methodologies, preemptive security patching, etc). Your actual high performers, if you have any, are doing all that stuff in addition to their regularly-scheduled duties.

If management weren't at least tacitly on board with this arrangement, your high performers would go work somewhere else. So my experience is that good managers don't tend to see this your way.

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

#349

Post by yCombLinks »

jappgar wrote: post #340
gwd wrote: post #335

"Don't expend more effort than they are" has actually long been a good principle to have internalized. Someone done only cursory research before asking a question on a mailing list? Give a cursory answer. Someone obviously spent hours trying to figure things out on their own? Give them a good chunk of your time. Someone on HN responding to you with single-sentence responses? Either don't respond, or respond in kind.…

It takes considerable energy to train models and run inference. You can't dismiss AI generated content as "low effort", but you can dismiss it as a wasteful diversion.

Way to miss the point. Bob on the other side of the room didn't train the model

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

#350

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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