5 ms·

My experience is juniors using them without prejudice and then not understanding why their code is wrong

SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
I am seeing that a lot - juniors who can put out a lot of code but when they get stuck they can't unstick themselves, and it's hard for me to unstick them because they have a hard time walking me through what they are doing.
- carlmr 2y ago
  I've gotten responses now on PRs of the form. "I don't know either, this is what Copilot told me." If you don't even understand your own PR, I'm not sure why you expect other people can. I have used LLMs myself, but mostly for boilerplate and one-off stuff. I think it can be quite helpful. But as soon as you stop understanding the code it generates you will create subtle bugs everywhere that will cost you dearly in the long run. I have the strong feeling that if LLMs really outsmart us to the degree that some AI gung-ho types believe, the old Kernighan quote will get a new meaning: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." We'll be left with code nobody can debug because it was handed to us by our super smart AI that only hallucinates sometimes. We'll take the words of another AI that the code works. And then we'll hope for the best.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    Copilot is best for me when it's letting me hit tab to auto-complete something I was going to write anyways.
    - carlmr 2y ago
      Copilot does hit that sweet to spot sometimes.
- ebiester 2y ago
  Is that so new? We used to complain when someone blindly copied and pasted from stack overflow. Before that, from experts-exchange. Coding is still a skill acquisition that takes years. We need to stamp out the behavior of not understanding what they take from copilot, but the behavior is not new.
  - SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    You're right, it isn't entirely new, but I think it's still different. You still had to figure out how that new code snippet applied to your code. Stack overflow wouldn't shape the code you're trying to slot in to fit your current code.

I am seeing that a lot - juniors who can put out a lot of code but when they get stuck they can't unstick themselves, and it's hard for me to unstick them because they have a hard time walking me through what they are doing.

carlmr 2y ago
I've gotten responses now on PRs of the form. "I don't know either, this is what Copilot told me." If you don't even understand your own PR, I'm not sure why you expect other people can. I have used LLMs myself, but mostly for boilerplate and one-off stuff. I think it can be quite helpful. But as soon as you stop understanding the code it generates you will create subtle bugs everywhere that will cost you dearly in the long run. I have the strong feeling that if LLMs really outsmart us to the degree that some AI gung-ho types believe, the old Kernighan quote will get a new meaning: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." We'll be left with code nobody can debug because it was handed to us by our super smart AI that only hallucinates sometimes. We'll take the words of another AI that the code works. And then we'll hope for the best.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  Copilot is best for me when it's letting me hit tab to auto-complete something I was going to write anyways.
  - carlmr 2y ago
    Copilot does hit that sweet to spot sometimes.
ebiester 2y ago
Is that so new? We used to complain when someone blindly copied and pasted from stack overflow. Before that, from experts-exchange. Coding is still a skill acquisition that takes years. We need to stamp out the behavior of not understanding what they take from copilot, but the behavior is not new.
- SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
  You're right, it isn't entirely new, but I think it's still different. You still had to figure out how that new code snippet applied to your code. Stack overflow wouldn't shape the code you're trying to slot in to fit your current code.