361–370 of 496 posts
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> What’s the point in debating the PR quality? Because the pro-group are whining that the policy is preventing the merge, when in actual fact even if the policy did not exist, the PR is crap anyway.
Of course the policy is preventing the merge. That’s literally the point of the policy…
are you too stupid to understand the notion of a hypothetical? how did you get on hn in the first place?
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> The argument assumes that unassisted PR authorship is what builds trustworthy contributors, and that LLM assistance prevents that growth. No, I don't think that was the argument. As I understood it, unassisted contributions have higher chances to grow a trusted contributor. Not 100% vs 0% chances, but statistically higher. So, given limited resources, it makes sense to prefer unassisted over assisted contributions.
I don't believe that even the weakened version of the argument works -- it is based on an assumption, not fact. Why would a contributor that uses AI assistance have fewer chances to be trusted? I'm not talking about AI slop, but a contributor that takes time to understand a problem, find a solution, and discuss pros/cons alternatives. Using LLM assistance, of course.
please read my explanation here:
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> Engineers who refuse to, or can't, or won't utilize the benefits that LLMs bring will be left behind. It's just the way it is. I'm already seeing it happening. Any examples how you see some engineers being left behind?
> Any examples how you see some engineers being left behind? I don't know where you live, but around where I live in Denmark you'd fail for not using AI at a senior interview in a lot of places. Even places which aren't exactly AI fans use AI to some extend. The biggest challenge we face right now is figuring out how you create developers who have enough experience to know how to use the AI tools in a critical manner…
> If you don't jump off the cliff you're falling behind
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Can't we reach a compromise where proven track record of good use of LLM by a contributor or a company (eg. Bun) be pre-approved or entertained? Blanket ban on a new technology shouldn't be the default option.
Certainly not in the case of asking it to do something you'd be slow at because you are unfamiliar. If you are not familiar enough with the system, how are you confident that what the LLM has produced is valid and complete? IMO the people saying LLMs make then 10x faster were either very bad to start with (like me!) or are not properly looking at the results before throwing them over the wall. And how do you know if…
Speed is seductive.
The bar isn't "this is a known good contributor". Its "this is a known good contributor working in a space they have knowledge in and has a track record of actually checking and thinking about LLM output before submitting it." It's much higher and I don't see how you can approve people on an organization-wide basis.
How about intellectual-property risks?
If LLM code really does have IP risk then most of the world's most valuable companies may have to throw away ~18 months of work at this point.
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Because you are at the whims of the bot they are at least partially dependent on.
You could extend that argument to any tool used by the developer, like a linter, sanitizer, the IDE itself, or even auto-completion. Why target LLMs specifically? The more I think about it, the more nonsensical it is. - What if I do everything by hand, but have an LLM review my work at the very end? - What if I have an LLM guide me through the codebase just by specifying the files I should read and in what order, but…
unlike LLMs, those are deterministic. the IDE doesn't even change the code. auto-completion only has a problem if it is done with AI.
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Those things cost resources, and now you're introducing a new attack vector: open up a bunch of shit PRs, burn a lot of cash for the target organization.
Can't you prevent pushing from the client side with pre-commit hooks? I would expect a hook to fire on the developer's computer that prevents them from even committing/pushing (unless they nuke the hook in their local repo copy).
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> Why use someone's project when you can just have the robot write your own? I've been thinking about this a bunch recently, and I've realized that the thing I value most in software now isn't robust tests or thorough documentation - an LLM can spit those out in a few minutes. It's usage. I want to use software which other people have used before me. I want them to have encountered the bugs and sharp edges and sanded…
Yep. I realised the same. No one reads docs, or goes through tests. Either ways it's easy to write useless tests. And easy to write useless docs. Idt most even read the code. Now the difference is that it has become possible to write useless code. So it's just the fact that others have already gone through the motions before I did. That's it really. I suppose in commercial settings, this is even more true and perhaps…
sooo uhh how do _you_ learn how to use a new library? just throw random shit at the wall until something sticks?
> This makes a lot of sense to me. It relates to an idea I've seen circulating elsewhere: if a PR was mostly written by an LLM, why should a project maintainer spend time reviewing and discussing that PR as opposed to firing up their own LLM to solve the same problem? You may as well say "if someone else can do it I'll just do it myself". It takes skill and taste to know what to ask, wisdom to recognize mistakes, and…
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"They may speed up the good programmers a little, but those people were able to program anyway without LLMs." I don't think this is realistic. I'm a good programmer, and it speeds up my work a lot , from "make sense of this 10 repo project I haven't worked on recently" to "for this next step I need a vpn multiplexer written in a language I don't use" to, yeah, "this 10k line patch lets me see parts of design space we…
yep. as an expert programmer there are things i did not have access to. for example, i have an embedded-lite hardware project that required a one line patch to a linux kernel Module. i know what a kernel module is and im reasonably certain that the patch is safe, but there is no way in hell i would have found that solution (i would have given up). in a world without llms, the project would have died.
Time and time again I've had a project (such as a DSL to SQL compiler, automatic Rust codegen, CSS development) stall because the LLM took a short sighted decision.
I later found better solutions by querying Reddit and upon consulting the LLM, it basically said "oh shit I'm sorry"