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Using LLMs at Oxide

rfd.shared.oxide.computer

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Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#31

Post by DrewADesign »

worble wrote: post #19
john01dav wrote: post #11

> it is presumed that of the reader and the writer, it is the writer that has undertaken the greater intellectual exertion. (That is, it is more work to write than to read!) This applies to natural language, but, interestingly, the opposite is true of code (in my experience and that of other people that I've discussed it with).

See: Kernighan's Law > Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you’re as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? https://www.laws-of-software.com/laws/kernighan/

I think people misunderstand this quote. Cleverness in this context is referring to complexity, and generally stems from falling in love with some complex mechanism you dream up to solve a problem rather than challenging yourself to create something simpler and easier to maintain. Bolting together bits of LLM-created code is is far more likely to be “clever” rather than good.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#32

Post by bgwalter »

Cantrill jumps on every bandwagon. When he assisted in cancelling a Node developer (not a native English speaker) over pronouns he was following the Zeitgeist, now "Broadly speaking, LLM use is encouraged at Oxide."

He is a long way from Sun.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#33

Post by torben-friis »

The guide is generally very well thought, but I see an issue in this part:

It sets the rule that things must be actually read when there’s a social expectation (code interviews for example) but otherwise… remarks that use of LLMs to assist comprehension has little downside.

I find two problems with this:

- there is incoherence there. If LLMs are flawless in reading and summarization, there is no difference with reading the original. And if they aren’t flawless, then that flaw also extends to non social stuff.

- in practice, I haven’t found LLMs so good as reading assistants. I’ve send them to check a linked doc and they’ve just read the index and inferred the context, for example. Just yesterday I asked for a comparison of three technical books on a similar topic, and it wrongly guessed the third one rather than follow the three links.

There is a significant risk in placing a translation layer between content and reader.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#34

Post by dcre »

mcqueenjordan wrote: post #28

As usual with Oxide's RFDs, I found myself vigorously head-nodding while reading. Somewhat rarely, I found a part that I found myself disagreeing with: > Unlike prose, however (which really should be handed in a polished form to an LLM to maximize the LLM’s efficacy), LLMs can be quite effective writing code de novo. Don't the same arguments against using LLMs to write one's prose also apply to code? Was this structu…

In my experience, LLMs have been quite capable of producing code I am satisfied with (though of course it depends on the context — I have much lower standards for one-off tools than long-lived apps). They are able to follow conventions already present in a codebase and produce something passable. Whereas with writing prose, I am almost never happy with the feel of what an LLM produces (worth noting that Sonnet and Opus 4.5’s prose may be moving up from disgusting to tolerable). I think of it as prose being higher-dimensional — for a given goal, often the way to express it in code is pretty obvious, and many developers would do essentially the same thing. Not so for prose.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#35

Post by lukasb »

mcqueenjordan wrote: post #28

As usual with Oxide's RFDs, I found myself vigorously head-nodding while reading. Somewhat rarely, I found a part that I found myself disagreeing with: > Unlike prose, however (which really should be handed in a polished form to an LLM to maximize the LLM’s efficacy), LLMs can be quite effective writing code de novo. Don't the same arguments against using LLMs to write one's prose also apply to code? Was this structu…

One difference is that clichéd prose is bad and clichéd code is generally good.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#37

Post by joshka »

lukasb wrote: post #35
mcqueenjordan wrote: post #28

As usual with Oxide's RFDs, I found myself vigorously head-nodding while reading. Somewhat rarely, I found a part that I found myself disagreeing with: > Unlike prose, however (which really should be handed in a polished form to an LLM to maximize the LLM’s efficacy), LLMs can be quite effective writing code de novo. Don't the same arguments against using LLMs to write one's prose also apply to code? Was this structu…

One difference is that clichéd prose is bad and clichéd code is generally good.

Depends on what your prose is for. If it's for documentation, then prose which matches the expected tone and form of other similar docs would be clichéd in this perspective. I think this is a really good use of LLMs - making docs consistent across a large library / codebase.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#38

Post by dcre »

minimaxir wrote: post #9
bryancoxwell wrote: post #7

Find it interesting that the section about LLM’s tells when using it for writing is absolutely littered with emdashes

You can stop LLMs from using em-dashes by just telling it to "never use em-dashes". This same type of prompt engineering works to mitigate almost every sign of AI-generated writing, which is one reason why AI writing heuristics/detectors can never be fully reliable.

This does not work on Bryan, however.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#39

Post by minimaxir »

joshka wrote: post #37
lukasb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference is that clichéd prose is bad and clichéd code is generally good.

Depends on what your prose is for. If it's for documentation, then prose which matches the expected tone and form of other similar docs would be clichéd in this perspective. I think this is a really good use of LLMs - making docs consistent across a large library / codebase.

I have been testing agentic coding with Claude 4.5 Opus and the problem is that it's too good at documentation and test cases. It's thorough in a way that it goes out of scope, so I have to edit it down to increase the signal-to-noise.

Re: Using LLMs at Oxide

#40

Post by dcre »

joshka wrote: post #37
lukasb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference is that clichéd prose is bad and clichéd code is generally good.

Depends on what your prose is for. If it's for documentation, then prose which matches the expected tone and form of other similar docs would be clichéd in this perspective. I think this is a really good use of LLMs - making docs consistent across a large library / codebase.

Docs also often don’t have anyone’s name on them, in which case they’re already attributed to an unknown composite author.
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