4 ms·

> With things like copilot, the boilerplate (if err != nil sorts of things) comes out really easily, and you can skim past it when reading. Easily... but is th

> With things like copilot, the boilerplate (if err != nil sorts of things) comes out really easily, and you can skim past it when reading. Easily... but is that simple though.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
It's very simple. It's explicit and tells you exactly how errors are handled (if you care), and it follows a very common pattern that is easy to ignore when you don't want to know how errors are handled. Simple and concise are two very different things. In comparison, languages with exceptions give you a minefield around every function call.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Ok. Then I will spell it out: using an LLM to generate code is not remotely simple.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    I will spell it out for you: Almost every language in the world has some sort of template-based autocomplete for common boilerplate that is often used, from class definition templates to if statements. If you aren't using one of these, you're probably working unproductively by thinking about all of your boilerplate instead of just taking it off the shelf. Copilot and its ilk just take this one step further by effectively giving you the same thing but with the slots in the template filled in. I could have said that "with autocomplete it's easy to write" and it would have the same meaning. The presence or absence of boilerplate (and thus the presence/usability of autocomplete systems) does not imply anything about simplicity.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      > I will spell it out for you: Almost every language in the world has some sort of template-based autocomplete for common boilerplate that is often used, from class definition templates to if statements. Which is very conceptually simple. `sout` in Intellij creating Java `println(...)` is very simple. Completely straightforward. Unlike LLMs. - Go is simple! - Great, but it takes a while for me to produce code in Go. - No problem, just use an LLM to help you write it! I felt that there was a 20% chance that you were being satirical.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        The LLM is just fancy autocomplete. You are latching on to the LLM aspect, not the autocomplete aspect, while the latter is the important part. The LLM literally just does a little more than a traditional autocomplete in real life. I said it because it's easy for people to understand what "copilot" actually does and I (wrongly) assumed people didn't go crazy when you mentioned it.
  - burnished 3y ago
    You can also just use templates for this sort of thing.

> With things like copilot, the boilerplate (if err != nil sorts of things) comes out really easily, and you can skim past it when reading. Easily... but is that simple though.

pclmulqdq 3y ago

It's very simple. It's explicit and tells you exactly how errors are handled (if you care), and it follows a very common pattern that is easy to ignore when you don't want to know how errors are handled. Simple and concise are two very different things. In comparison, languages with exceptions give you a minefield around every function call.

avgcorrection 3y ago
Ok. Then I will spell it out: using an LLM to generate code is not remotely simple.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  I will spell it out for you: Almost every language in the world has some sort of template-based autocomplete for common boilerplate that is often used, from class definition templates to if statements. If you aren't using one of these, you're probably working unproductively by thinking about all of your boilerplate instead of just taking it off the shelf. Copilot and its ilk just take this one step further by effectively giving you the same thing but with the slots in the template filled in. I could have said that "with autocomplete it's easy to write" and it would have the same meaning. The presence or absence of boilerplate (and thus the presence/usability of autocomplete systems) does not imply anything about simplicity.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > I will spell it out for you: Almost every language in the world has some sort of template-based autocomplete for common boilerplate that is often used, from class definition templates to if statements. Which is very conceptually simple. `sout` in Intellij creating Java `println(...)` is very simple. Completely straightforward. Unlike LLMs. - Go is simple! - Great, but it takes a while for me to produce code in Go. - No problem, just use an LLM to help you write it! I felt that there was a 20% chance that you were being satirical.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      The LLM is just fancy autocomplete. You are latching on to the LLM aspect, not the autocomplete aspect, while the latter is the important part. The LLM literally just does a little more than a traditional autocomplete in real life. I said it because it's easy for people to understand what "copilot" actually does and I (wrongly) assumed people didn't go crazy when you mentioned it.
- burnished 3y ago
  You can also just use templates for this sort of thing.