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I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

claytonwramsey.com

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Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#91

Post by toast0 »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #78
onion2k wrote: post #23

One of the first things I tell the junior/mid-level developers I mentor is "You can't debug something just by reading the code." We all have a mental model of how our code works, and it's usually a bit wrong. Bugs are the real world manifestations of those mistakes. When you read the code it's all filtered through your model, and that makes you blind to seeing why something unexpected happened. In order to debug some…

> "You can't debug something just by reading the code." This is exactly how I debug things. When I first started working I was forbidden from using the debugger “you won’t have a debugger in the field”. Being able to read the code, spot the bug and tie it to the symptoms; that’s a skill. A damned important skill.

100%. Debuggers are nice when you can use them, trace logs are nice when you have them, clean repros are nice.

But lots of bugs can and should be found and fixed by inspection of the code, inspired by a reasonable observation.

Depending on your process needs, maybe write a test to confirm the fix.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#92

Post by sillyfluke »

GrinningFool wrote: post #82
onion2k wrote: post #23

One of the first things I tell the junior/mid-level developers I mentor is "You can't debug something just by reading the code." We all have a mental model of how our code works, and it's usually a bit wrong. Bugs are the real world manifestations of those mistakes. When you read the code it's all filtered through your model, and that makes you blind to seeing why something unexpected happened. In order to debug some…

> You can't debug something just by reading the code. You are doing those junior engineers a disservice with this message. I'm usually trying to go in the other direction with them - you don't need to be able to reproduce it yourself or see the log files to narrow down or find the cause of an issue. Logs/etc are just additional tool that make it easier. Lost track of how many juniors I've seen throw their hands up an…

> Lost track of how many juniors I've seen throw their hands up and say they can't progress because they don't have logs/clean repro

Not the parent, but I think their approach is the correct one even though their line that you quote "You can't debug something..." should be everything instead of something.

The issue with your juniors is them throwing their hands in the air without actually reading the code when they hit a wall, and not them trying to reproduce and inspect the bug first.

What's the issue with telling them, "Obviously if you can't reproduce it and inspect it with dev tools, read the code."?

I've won bets off devs who blamed me cause they said they couldn't reproduce the bug consistently when they tried but it would happen randomly in production. Mind you, the bet wasn't even about who was at fault. The bet was that I could reproduce it if I actually tried.

You are complaining about juniors in a role that's known for the motto "it works on my machine" of course they're going to whine the moment it takes some effort to reproduce something.

At the end of the day, how are you going to claim you fixed an issue if you can't reproduce it to begin with? The senior has to now read the code more carefully cause there is no proof the junior actually fixed anything.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#93

Post by walrus01 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #85
walrus01 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen a bit of a resurgence in your classic 2005-era type interface php bulletin board in a browser, as people relegate their facebook/instagram/whatever accounts to only keeping up with family stuff posted by boomers who won't use anything else, or things like niche neighborhood based buy & sell groups (or community notice groups in like a town of 12,000). I guess there's at least 3 or more active and currentl…

This runs on FlaskBB because I prefer Python to PHP. I'd love to write a backend for it to expose the forum as NNTP ;-)

I recently had reason to implement something using xterm.js and node-pty for a CLI environment in a browser, so I think that it would be possible to re-implement actual IRC live chat inside a html/html5/TLS1.3 session in a browser tab too.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#94

Post by GrinningFool »

sillyfluke wrote: post #92
GrinningFool wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't debug something just by reading the code. You are doing those junior engineers a disservice with this message. I'm usually trying to go in the other direction with them - you don't need to be able to reproduce it yourself or see the log files to narrow down or find the cause of an issue. Logs/etc are just additional tool that make it easier. Lost track of how many juniors I've seen throw their hands up an…

> Lost track of how many juniors I've seen throw their hands up and say they can't progress because they don't have logs/clean repro Not the parent, but I think their approach is the correct one even though their line that you quote "You can't debug something..." should be everything instead of something . The issue with your juniors is them throwing their hands in the air without actually reading the code when they…

I'm actually not complaining. I coach them through it, but the primary help I give is showing them how to walk through the code, and break the dependency on logs/repro scenarios.[1]

In addition, if you find the issue in the code -- unless it's a really unusual race condition -- you have what you need to construct a reproduction scenario. That's also part of the coaching.

[1] At least, I did until the place I work switched everyone to vibe coding. Now I give terse responses to their LLM-generated PRs -- which usually misses the forest for the trees -- since I know that they're just going to feed my words back into the machine.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#95

Post by conradludgate »

hliyan wrote: post #30
dwedge wrote: post #27

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement. Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponent…

I've now completely stopped engaging with anyone on that platform that I can't reasonably traced back to a real person. If any non-real-name account says anything that remotely feels bad-faith in replies, I block them. Having been on the Internet since the mid 90's when it was the frontier, and everyone helped/trusted everyone else, the policy feels very wrong. But unfortunately Twitter has given no tools or alternat…

Nowadays it's the anonymous accounts that are generally most likely real, and the "real name" accounts with a human profile picture are most likely mass generated. You just use a name generator and pull profile pictures from Google images and you have a real user profile

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#96

Post by SadErn »

burnoutdv wrote: post #10
SadErn wrote: post #2

I like to think of training and improving AIs as bringing freedom to the world. The useless toil and labor associated with rebuilding the same solutions into different contexts is finally at an end. Coding was never the reward. Acting as a translator for a machine is far worse than allowing the machine to solve the mundane parts and leave you with bigger building blocks to play with. After 25 years I have to confess…

You got nothing. Giant corpos hold every sliver of your so called freedom, you dont innovate, you repeat what others created before you. You use a tool that shackles your thoughts and creativity in a never before seen way, what you perceive is an illusion of liberty that is no present. Without others you are nothing and they can take it away any seconds, you are an addict, not an innovator.

[dead]

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#97

Post by vintermann »

onion2k wrote: post #23

One of the first things I tell the junior/mid-level developers I mentor is "You can't debug something just by reading the code." We all have a mental model of how our code works, and it's usually a bit wrong. Bugs are the real world manifestations of those mistakes. When you read the code it's all filtered through your model, and that makes you blind to seeing why something unexpected happened. In order to debug some…

> LLMs generally only debug systems by reading the code with whatever information you give them in a prompt.

Oh, I wish. "This call doesn't return, how strange! Let me fire off a bunch of small test script one after another, with a timeout of 10 minutes each, to narrow down where the error might be!" In terms of tokens, it's maybe even efficient. In terms of time it isn't!

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#98

Post by alienthrowaway »

dwedge wrote: post #27

> I used to argue with people on the internet, after about six replies, you realize that you’re speaking to someone incapable of thought He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement. Around 10 years ago I noticed this happening on trending topics of Twitter - it wasn't that the opponent…

> He realises the current woe of things but doesn't realise he's been arguing with bot farms and teams of people hired just for this reason - to sow doom, arguments and engagement.

I've had the same kind of argument you'd swear was a bot with real people I know offline. The best explanation I could come up with was that they got radicalized online, was shameless about arguing in bad faith, and was willing to say heinous things in a group text, but refused to continue the discussion when I challenged them to do so IRL when I next met them - their electronic words towards me were particularly foul. Polarization, online echo-chambers, lack of consequences, and shamelessness have conspired to crater the quality of discourse and provide plenty of fuel for bots and psy-ops operators to fan the flames.

Re: I'm a seeing-eye dog for a computer

#100

Post by bluefirebrand »

conradludgate wrote: post #95
hliyan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've now completely stopped engaging with anyone on that platform that I can't reasonably traced back to a real person. If any non-real-name account says anything that remotely feels bad-faith in replies, I block them. Having been on the Internet since the mid 90's when it was the frontier, and everyone helped/trusted everyone else, the policy feels very wrong. But unfortunately Twitter has given no tools or alternat…

Nowadays it's the anonymous accounts that are generally most likely real, and the "real name" accounts with a human profile picture are most likely mass generated. You just use a name generator and pull profile pictures from Google images and you have a real user profile

Personally I always use anonymous accounts.

I have no interest in posting under my real name. My surname is too unique, and I don't want employers to find me online

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