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What we lost the last time code got cheap

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Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#81

Post by pizzly »

croemer wrote: post #21

Reads at least partially like LLM writing, for example: > When code production gets cheap, the cost doesn't disappear. It migrates. > It was true then. It is unavoidably true now.

Sometimes I feel like we are entering a new witch hunt era but for LLM generated text. Before clicking submit I am sometimes afraid that the text will be labled "LLM Generated" even though its not. Enough people classify you as a witch and you get burnt. Though in this case you only receive nasty comments, down votes and possible social media bans.

Edit: In my observation it seems that people's opinions that do not agree with you get labeled as "AI Generated" more than opinions that agree with yours.

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#82

Post by wiremine »

creesch wrote: post #77
wiremine wrote: post #53

> The code they [LLMs] produce is often fine. It works. It passes tests. It might ship as-is. I don't disagree, but I've been thinking about this a bit: a lot of _human_ written code was/is less-than-fine. And a lot of human devs didn't understand the context when they wrote it. I'm not advocating that we fire devs, or evangelizing that LLms are awesome. But I do wish there was a slightly more honest take on the pre-…

> it's not just about cost reduction, it's about solving some long-term structural deficiencies of industry. You know, I hate that this is a world where I have to ask myself if this is LLM written because it is one of those patterns. But that is besides the point of what I wanted to say anyway. Those deficiencies aren't going to be solved by LLMs I recon. In fact, they likely will make things worse. As you said, a lo…

> You know, I hate that this is a world where I have to ask myself if this is LLM written because it is one of those patterns.

Lol, nope, I just sound that way. :-)

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#84

Post by irq-1 »

nostrademons wrote: post #57
pmmucsd wrote: post #36

Related (maybe the same thing): Whenever an agent is planning there are often architecture and product choices that it asks humans to make. None of this intent is captured in the code or comments. We started a decisions.md file and updated CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md to create an entry in the decisions.md file everytime it has to ask a human about what to do. It captures the intent so at least we have doc that describes…

Human coders have the same problem too - oftentimes the most important question that future maintainers have of the code is " Why was this decision made?", but that's not captured anywhere in the code itself. The right place for this is usually in the design doc or commit message, and robust engineering organizations will ensure that commits are cross-referenced back to design and requirements docs so you can trace d…

> Google, for example, is internally championing a process where the engineer has a dialog with the LLM to generate a design doc ...

Smart. They'll be able to regenerate code in the future, with better LLMs. It also lets them redo the architecture combined with other parts of the system as context grows.

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#85

Post by xienze »

bluebands wrote: post #62
xienze wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like clockwork, every single thread about something AI-related has someone expressing their disgust at passages of LLM-written text. In many cases by the same people who are enthusiastically embracing LLM-generated software. Why don't we show the same level of contempt for LLM-authored software as we do for even the slightest hint of LLM-authored text in a blog post?

code is not user-facing, functionality, ux, and specs are! there are many apps with ai-generated ideas, specs, and functionality. nobody uses them because of the contempt. in either case, the part that's user-facing is ai-resistant

> code is not user-facing

The user interacts with the code, and if it's sloppy AI generated code, it's going to impact the user somehow. Be it through poor performance, bugs, security holes, you name it.

Maybe I was naive in thinking the bar was higher than "as long as I can't tell an LLM wrote it that's good enough for me."

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#86

Post by dilyevsky »

pixl97 wrote: post #80
dilyevsky wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "It’s harder to read code than to write it" was always silly. The example spolsky gives to support it is basically "devs like to rewrite other devs code, therefore reading is hard" which is obviously bunch of nonsense. That's like saying reading poetry is harder than writing poetry because poets keep writing new poems despite the fact that Shakespeare already wrote it. Now that you can recruit LLM to explain any…

This isn't a great analogy. The thing about code is it is part of a whole. While often code can be read in smaller pieces and understood, quite often you have to understand a very large part, if not all the work to really see what is going on. This is why things like SAST are topical. They miss all kinds of exploits because they don't understand the program. The more in depth you try to scan the more the memory requi…

This analogy directly addresses spolsky’s botched argument. The point is devs went into this career to dev not read other people’s code whether it makes business sense or not. What you said applies to writing code just as well as reading it so clearly writing cant be easier than reading - it’s at least as hard and most definitely harder

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#87

Post by xienze »

NuclearPM wrote: post #69
xienze wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like clockwork, every single thread about something AI-related has someone expressing their disgust at passages of LLM-written text. In many cases by the same people who are enthusiastically embracing LLM-generated software. Why don't we show the same level of contempt for LLM-authored software as we do for even the slightest hint of LLM-authored text in a blog post?

Code is machinery, writing is communication between humans.

Users interface with programs, which are code. And even if you don't think that matters, do instances of "it's not X, it's Y" in a blog post make the text less readable? You could make a compelling argument that many people's prose is greatly enhanced by running it through an LLM, yet unlike in the case of code there's nothing but contempt for that.

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#89

Post by sanderjd »

pmmucsd wrote: post #36

Related (maybe the same thing): Whenever an agent is planning there are often architecture and product choices that it asks humans to make. None of this intent is captured in the code or comments. We started a decisions.md file and updated CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md to create an entry in the decisions.md file everytime it has to ask a human about what to do. It captures the intent so at least we have doc that describes…

In my experience, those decisions generally (without additional prompting) end up in the PR descriptions, and then in commit history. Which is how it was with human written code as well...

Or if it's more product level decisions than technical, those conversations tend to be documented in tickets. Which, again, that's how this already worked.

Re: What we lost the last time code got cheap

#90

Post by andybak »

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #33
esafak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lets you understand the code base at reduced granularity when you want. Or zoom in beyond the written lines to explain _why_ some code is the way it is.

Why not just read the code.. Ya'll are literally letting your brain atrophy by using llms this way.

Despite you using "literally" purely for emphasis, I would dispute this based on both the literal and popular meaning of "literally".
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