I have a feeling that the same idea absolutely does apply to code. Writing code is much closer to writing prose than it may seem. And the act of writing code also makes you think as you write. Even if you're writing boilerplate. Because how else would you uncover subtle opportunities to reduce the boilerplate and introduce new, better abstractions?
Do your own writing
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Re: Do your own writing
#82Curious if people are actually using AI to publish real scientific papers?
Re: Do your own writing
#83I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…
> agent write release notes for your agent in the future...
I have been going back to verbose, expansive inline comments. If you put the "history" inline it is context, if you stuff it off in some other system it's an artifact. I cant tell you how many times I have worked in an old codebase, that references a "bug number" in a long dead tracking system.
Re: Do your own writing
#84I wrote about something similar this week[0]. Beyond doing your own writing and understanding the outcomes that you want clearly, there is an increasing need for us to write our own docs/tickets as all of these are also the prompts.
Docs written by agents almost always produce mediocre results.
Re: Do your own writing
#85[deleted]
Re: Do your own writing
#86I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…
> For these cases, I think we should just drop the premise altogether that you're writing.
Sure.
> If you need to write a proposal for something as a matter of ritual, give it AI. If you're documenting a feature to remember context only (and not really explain the larger abstract principles driving it), it's better created as context for an LLM to consume.
No, no, no. You don't need to take that step. Whatever bullet-point list you're feeding in as the prompt is the relevant artifact you should be producing and adding to the bug, or sharing as an e-mail, or whatever.
Re: Do your own writing
#87I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…
For your context, I'm an AI hater, so understand my assumptions as such. > The obvious best solution is to have your agent write release notes for your agent in the future to have context. No more tedious writing or reading, but also no missing context. Why is more AI the "obvious" best solution here? If nobody wants to read your release notes, then why write them? And if they're going to slim them down with their AI…
This is kind of a fundamental issue with release notes. They are broadcasting lots of information, and only a small amount of information is relevant to any particular user (at least in my experience).
If I had a technically capable human assistant, I would have them filter through release notes from a vendor and only give me the relevant information for APIs I use. Having them take care of the boring, menial task so I can focus on more important things seems like a no brainer. So it seems reasonable to me to have an AI do that for me as well.
Re: Do your own writing
#88I find LLM's particularly good at filtering and distilling a large rambling idea that I have into a well-formatted and coherent paragraph, and also removing any statements that would be perceived as overly argumentative or rude.
In essense, LLM's are a much better spell check.
Re: Do your own writing
#89I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…
> agent write release notes for your agent in the future... I have been going back to verbose, expansive inline comments. If you put the "history" inline it is context, if you stuff it off in some other system it's an artifact. I cant tell you how many times I have worked in an old codebase, that references a "bug number" in a long dead tracking system.
But how do you deal with communicating that some library you maintain has a behavior change? People already need to know to look at your code in order to read your comments.
Re: Do your own writing
#90I agree with most of this, but my one qualm is the notion that LLMs "are particularly good at generating ideas." It's fair enough that you can discard any bad ideas they generate. But by design, the recommendations will be average, bland, mainstream, and mostly devoid of nuance. I wouldn't encourage anyone to use LLMs to generate ideas if you're trying to create interesting or novel ideas.
"by design, the recommendations will be average"
This couldn't be more wrong. The simplest refutation is just to point out that there are temperature and top-k settings, which by design, generate tokens (and by extension, ideas) that are less probable given the inputs.