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Understanding is the new bottleneck

geoffreylitt.com

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Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#31

Post by thombles »

alecbz wrote: post #30
avaer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe on your team, but I don't think AI PRs are universally disliked. The people that submit PRs without understanding them are universally disliked. Have you tried writing in AGENTS.md or whatever to exactly explain what you like/dislike about the PR descriptions?

The PR descriptions are pretty universally disliked. We have centralized tooling that manages the prompts for that, I’m sure they’ve tried tuning it but maybe there’s more they could do. Though I have some local workflows where I try to teach Claude about my writing style preferences via skills and examples, and it’s still not great.

It’s definitely possible to get much better output with prompting. I know, because when I’m faced with a “standard” PR description full of technical clutter, I can paste the link to Claude and ask “ELI5 what the problem actually is, any important context, what changed, and why that solves the problem.” And most of the time it converts it into something pretty good and readable.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#32

Post by storus »

alecbz wrote: post #6

We have LLMs try to generate descriptions of PRs for us and they're pretty universally disliked. They're always overly-complex descriptions of the mechanical changes and have no sense of motivation. Also, a huge reason to understand the code yourself is to make sure the LLM isn't wrong, but this doesn't work if an LLM is itself generating the understanding.

My main gripe is with Claude deciding to make 200 lines of code in a PR I need to review, instead of 3 lines of code somebody who understands the original algorithm/intent would do. And coworkers just YOLOing changes without understanding them. Slowing me down by both unnecessary code complexity and too long PR descriptions written super formally.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#33

Post by baq »

jollyllama wrote: post #29
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. From my experience I get pretty good descriptions of PRs if I ask the right questions and provide some context.

> provide some context That's pretty much what a PR description is.

The difference is an LLM can convert a stream of consciousness into well-formed prose for approximately free; I assume ‘provide some context’ means ‘brain dump’ in the OP

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#34

Post by baq »

morkalork wrote: post #11
alecbz wrote: post #6

We have LLMs try to generate descriptions of PRs for us and they're pretty universally disliked. They're always overly-complex descriptions of the mechanical changes and have no sense of motivation. Also, a huge reason to understand the code yourself is to make sure the LLM isn't wrong, but this doesn't work if an LLM is itself generating the understanding.

I am so very tired of 2 page long PR descriptions for a 5 line change.

Some 5-line changes deserve a phd.

But yeah, most probably don’t.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#35

Post by causal »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #18

Understanding has always been the bottleneck. That's why LLMs aren't actually helpful: they speed up the part which is easy (typing characters into your editor), but are neutral or even harmful on the part which is hard (understanding the problem and how best to solve it).

It seems like humans have a limited "understanding budget" but LLMs force us to spend that understanding on waaaaay more code and projects than ever before.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#36

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

Understanding was always the bottleneck. The way LLMs speed up your work is by letting you get code without taking the time to understand it. If you want to understand your code, LLMs are a net loss.

If you want to move faster with LLMs, you need to act like a manager and stop caring about what the LLM did. You just need to do the manual testing and make sure it works.

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#39

Post by [deleted] »

baq wrote: post #33
jollyllama wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> provide some context That's pretty much what a PR description is.

The difference is an LLM can convert a stream of consciousness into well-formed prose for approximately free; I assume ‘provide some context’ means ‘brain dump’ in the OP

[deleted]

Re: Understanding is the new bottleneck

#40

Post by techpression »

iainctduncan wrote: post #3

I am so dying to read more about the new/current/real bottleneck! Where is the bottleneck? WHERE?? Tell me! No evidence needed, just lay it on, man to man, thought-leader to thought-leader!

It doesn’t matter, once you found the bottleneck there is a new one. Seems we changed the supposed bottleneck of writing code (as if it ever were, the world was producing far too much code before LLMs were even a thing) with about ten or so new ones, was it a good trade?
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