Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

blog.katanaquant.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 460 posts

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#131

Post by Implicated »

tsimionescu wrote: post #128
Implicated wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find, at times, that those communicating in a language that's not their primary language will tend to deviate from what one whose it was their primary language might expect. If that's obvious to you than you're just being rude. If it's not obvious to you, then you'll also find this is a common deviance (plural 'code') from those who come from a particular primary language's region. Edit; This got me thinking -…

"Codes" as a way to refer to programs/libraries is actually common usage in academia and scientific programming, even by native English speakers. I believe, but am not sure, that it may just be relatively old jargon, before the use of "programs" became more common in the industry. As for the grammar rule, it's the question of whether a word is countable or uncountable. In common industry usage, "code" is an uncountab…

> Typically the uncountable version is used with a measure of quantity, while the countable version denotes different kinds (flours - different types of flour; peoples - different groups of people).

This was very helpful, thank you! (I had just gotten off the phone with Claude learning about countable and uncountable nouns but those additional details you provided should prove quite valuable)

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#132

Post by thesz »

Implicated wrote: post #123
thesz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM code is higher quality than any codes I have seen in my 20 years in F500. "Any codes"?

You'll find, at times, that those communicating in a language that's not their primary language will tend to deviate from what one whose it was their primary language might expect. If that's obvious to you than you're just being rude. If it's not obvious to you, then you'll also find this is a common deviance (plural 'code') from those who come from a particular primary language's region. Edit; This got me thinking -…

The question was about universal quantification, not grammar error.

As if author of the comment had not seen any code that is better or of equal quality of code generated by LLMs.

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#134

Post by joquarky »

pornel wrote: post #36

Their default solution is to keep digging. It has a compounding effect of generating more and more code. If they implement something with a not-so-great approach, they'll keep adding workarounds or redundant code every time they run into limitations later. If you tell them the code is slow, they'll try to add optimized fast paths (more code), specialized routines (more code), custom data structures (even more code).…

Don't let it deteriorate so far that it can't recover in one session.

Perform regular sessions dedicated to cleaning up tech debt (including docs).

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#135

Post by thesz »

Implicated wrote: post #129
Foobar8568 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least my comment hasn't been reviewed or written by a LLM. And in my French brain, code or codebase is countable and not uncountable.

I got curious and had to fire up the ol LLM to find out what the story is about the words that aren't pluralized - TIL about countable and uncountable nouns. I wonder if the guy giving you trouble about your English speaks French.

I speak Russian and some English, but the question was about universal quantification: author declares that LLMs generate code of better quality than "any codes" he seen in his career.

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#136

Post by Implicated »

thesz wrote: post #132
Implicated wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find, at times, that those communicating in a language that's not their primary language will tend to deviate from what one whose it was their primary language might expect. If that's obvious to you than you're just being rude. If it's not obvious to you, then you'll also find this is a common deviance (plural 'code') from those who come from a particular primary language's region. Edit; This got me thinking -…

The question was about universal quantification, not grammar error. As if author of the comment had not seen any code that is better or of equal quality of code generated by LLMs.

Well now I look like an idiot. But I did learn some things! :D My apologies.

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#138

Post by leke »

pornel wrote: post #36

Their default solution is to keep digging. It has a compounding effect of generating more and more code. If they implement something with a not-so-great approach, they'll keep adding workarounds or redundant code every time they run into limitations later. If you tell them the code is slow, they'll try to add optimized fast paths (more code), specialized routines (more code), custom data structures (even more code).…

i wonder if the solution is to just ask it to refactor its code once it's working.

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#139

Post by Implicated »

riffraff wrote: post #126
Implicated wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be snarky, with all due respect... this is a skill issue. It's a tool. It's a wildly effective and capable tool. I don't know how or why I have such a wildly different experience than so many that describe their experiences in a similar manner... but... nearly every time I come to the same conclusion that the input determines the output. > If they implement something with a not-so-great approach, they'l…

> Whew. Ok. You don't tell it the code is slow. Do you tell your coworker "Hey, your code is slow" and expect great results? Yes? Why don't you? They are capable people that just didn't notice something, id I notice some telemetry and tell them "hey this is slow" they are expected to understand the reason(s).

So, you observed some telemetry - which would have been some sort of specific metric, right? Wouldn't you communicate that to them as well, not just "it's slow"?

"Hey, I saw that metric A was reporting 40% slower, are you aware already or have any ideas as to what might be causing that?"

Those two approaches are going to produce rather distinctly different results whether you're speaking to a human or typing to a GPU.

Re: LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first

#140

Post by imiric »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #121
Foobar8568 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the reality nobody really wants to say.

It's not reality. I'm really not a fan of the way that people excuse the really terrible code LLMs write by claiming that people write code just as bad. Even if that were true, it is not true that when you ask those people to do otherwise they simply pretend to have done it and forget you asked later.

It's an easy copout.

Tool works as expected? It's superintelligence. Programming is dead.

Tool makes dumb mistake? So do humans.

Post reply on HN