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Seconding digdugdirk's comment :) Thanks for the thoughtful response and I apologize if I came across as mean. My problem is we have no clue what those lines a
by nicklecompte 3y ago
Seconding digdugdirk's comment :) Thanks for the thoughtful response and I apologize if I came across as mean.
My problem is we have no clue what those lines actually were. If it was effectively dead code, then it's not surprising that it was untested, and the LLM-generated test wouldn't be valuable to the team. We have no clue what the value of the test actually was, and using a single stat like "lines of code covered" doesn't actually tell us anything. Saying the test was "exponentially more valuable" is pure speculation, and IMO not an especially well-founded one. (Sort of like saying people who write more lines of code are more productive.)
This speculation seems downright irresponsible when the paper specifically emphasizes that this result was a fluke. When the authors said "hit the jackpot" they did not mean "hit the jackpot with a valuable test", they meant "hit the jackpot with an outlier that somewhat artificially juked the stats." I truly believe if the LLM managed to write a unusually valuable test with such broad coverage they would have mentioned it in the qualitative discussion. Instead they went out of their way to dismiss the importance of the 1,326 figure.
- engineercodex 3y agoYou're right. I've edited my wording to be more realistic about the value of the test. I believe you're right that the test is not an outlier in terms of value provided. Some of my comments within the article are more aspirational than realistic in this case, and I've made edits to reflect that. I want to clarify that I view this LLM as a junior dev that submits PRs that pass presubmits and other verifiable, programmatic checks. A human dev then reviews the PR manually. In this case, the LLM + its processing is used to make sure that no BS is sent out of review - only potential improvements. In no scenario should it's auto-generated code be auto-submitted into the codebase. That becomes a nightmare really fast.