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Write code like a human will maintain it

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Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#71

Post by TimTheTinker »

alexpotato wrote: post #3

There is an old quote: "Add comments to your code under the assumption that the next person to maintain it is a homicidal maniac who knows where you live"

Right now the comments that upset me the most are LLM TMI-style comments that break encapsulation by talking about the behavior of specific current callers of a function right above the function definition.

I recently reacted angrily in a PR review comment after encountering one for the umpteenth time... that caught me off guard. I didn't know I was capable of that.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#72

Post by sejje »

gowld wrote: post #31
hansonkd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments that drive the most homicidal behavior are outdated or inaccurate comments rather than no comments.

Put your home address in the comments. Problem solved.

I moved after I wrote the comment. It's hard to keep everything up to date.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#73

Post by sejje »

carimura wrote: post #19

I continually run codebases through different models to have them look for bad code smells like repeated code. That's been pretty effective. You do have to maintain over time or else you end up with a sloppy mess which I can only imagine compounds.

Do you think it matters that it's a different model?

Or is it more about the review process and a context reset?

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#76

Post by thevillagechief »

schnebbau wrote: post #7

That sounds like a good idea, but shipping 10x as many features and bugfixes sounds better. I started using AI with the best intentions. Checking everything before committing. Improving output by hand if it didn't quite follow the existing code style guidelines or variables were not named as well as they should be. Or if it did something sloppy or hacky. Now, AI GOES BURRRRRRRRRRRR! If the tests pass it's good to shi…

Are you my colleague? It's fine if it's your own personal app, but please don't do this in a large complex codebase in a team. It's entirely depressing. You can use AI and still write good code. I think it's actually probably easier to write maintainable code with AI.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#77

Post by chopete3 »

planb wrote: post #64

I have good results with this prompt after every larger change: Now do a final code check. Is everything tidy and do the components adhere to the principle of separations-of-concerns. Is everything in an understandable and maintainable state? Do we make any assumptions that may not be true anymore? Is any code left over from previous edits or experiments that does not belong into the codebase? Is the documentation st…

This is a good example of AI native thinking. Teach AI everything and ask it if it has learnt throughly learnt. The results are surprisingly good.

I am following similar steps from this article https://www.lucasfcosta.com/blog/backpressure-is-all-you-nee...

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#78

Post by jasonlotito »

linting tools, static analysis, CPD, etc. These are all old things you can continue to use and are much more robust than anything you can prompt. These should be standard when using LLMs. In fact, you can tighten the rules even more enforcing more restrictions so you ONLY get the output you want. put this behind a pre-commit hook and a CI job that runs on a PR, and it will work wonders.

You can have all the prompts you want on top of this, but if you don't have this automated stuff running behind the scenes, you aren't serious about these issues.

Looking through some of these comments here, I see lots of people rewriting concrete rules in markdown willing to spend tokens on the hope AI won't miss it where an actual program won't.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#80

Post by mekoka »

saghm wrote: post #35
hansonkd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments that drive the most homicidal behavior are outdated or inaccurate comments rather than no comments.

Sure, but the proportion of code that drives homicidal behavior is heavily weighted towards non-comments. You're a lot more likely to piss off whoever inherits your code with the code that actually does something being bad or a lack of documentation than with comments.

Ignorance will always be a better starting point for discovery than wrong assumptions. If you leave comments, they must reflect what the code is actually doing. If during edit it's no longer the case, at least mark them as stale. The next best thing is indeed to remove them.
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