6 ms·

I use LLMs for writing generic, repetitive code, like scaffolding. It's OK with boring, generic stuff. Sure it makes mistakes occasionally but usually it's a n

by kgeist 2y ago

I use LLMs for writing generic, repetitive code, like scaffolding. It's OK with boring, generic stuff. Sure it makes mistakes occasionally but usually it's a no-brainer to fix them.

andix 2y ago
I try to keep "boring" code to a minimum, by finding meaningful and simple abstractions. LLMs are especially bad handling those, because they were not trained on non-standard abstractions. Edit: most LLMs are great for spitting out some code that fulfills 90% of what you asked for. That's sometimes all you need. But we all know that the last 10% usually take the same amount of effort as the first 90%.
- rafaelmn 2y ago
  This is what got me in most sleepless nights, crunch and ass clenching production issues over my career. Simple repetitive shit is easy to reason about, debug and onboard people on. Naturally it's balancing act, and modern/popular frameworks are where most people landed, there's been a lot of iteration in this space for decades now.
  - andix 2y ago
    I've made the opposite observation. Without proper abstractions code bases grow like crazy. At some point they are just a huge amount of copy, paste, and slight modification. The amount of code often grows exponentially. With more lines of code comes more effort to maintain it. After a few years those copy and pasted code pieces completely drift apart and create a lot of similar but different issues, that need to be addressed one by one. My approach for designing abstractions is always to make them composable (not this enterprise java inheritance chaos). To allow escaping them when needed.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      > At some point they are just a huge amount of copy, paste, and slight modification. I mean is that bad? Unless you keep having to have huge MRs that modify every copy/paste could you just let the code sit there and run forever? I only say this because I've been a maintenance programmer and I could only dream of a codebase like this. The idea that I get a Rollbar with a stack trace and the entirety of what the code actually does is laid bare right at the site of the error in a single file is amazing. And I can change it without affecting anything else?! I end up having to "unwind" all of the abstractions anyway because the nature of the job means I'm not intimately familiar with the codebase and don't just know where the real work happens.
      - notpushkin 2y ago
        There is a balance. Too much abstractions isn’t necessarily better than not enough abstractions. The optimal amount is usually non-zero, though.
        rafaelmn 2y ago
        But the point is that modern/popular frameworks picked the low hanging fruit of abstraction, we had several iteration cycles over two+ decades of mainstream web tech. The landscape (browser capabilities, backend stacks) has settled over last ten years. We even had time to standardize on things somewhat. Building new abstractions at this point is almost always the wrong move. This is one of the points that LLMs will improve in software dev - they will kill the framework churn because they will work best on stuff already in training data.
- simion314 2y ago
  >most LLMs are great for spitting out some code that fulfills 90% of what you asked for. That's sometimes all you need. But we all know that the last 10% usually take the same amount of effort as the first 90%. The issue is if you have an LLm write for you 10k lines of code, where 100 lines are bugged. Now you need to debug the code you did not write and find the bugged code, you will waste similar amount of time. The issue is if you do not catch the bugs in time, you think you gain some hours but you will get upset customers because things went wrong because the code is weird. From my experience you need to work withan LLM and have the code done function by function, with your input and you checking it and calling bullshit when it does stupid things.
  - xmprt 2y ago
    In my experience using LLMs, the 90% is less about buggy code and more about just ignoring 10% of the features that you require. So it will write code that's mostly correct in 100-1000 lines of code (not buggy) but then no matter how hard you try, it won't get the remaining 10% right and in the process, it will mess up parts of the 90% that was already working or end up writing another 1000 lines of undecipherable code to get 97% there but still never 100% unless you're building something that's not that unique.
    - andix 2y ago
      Exactly my experience. It's always missing something. And the generated code often can't be extended to fulfil those missing aspects.
Terr_ 2y ago
> I use LLMs for writing generic, repetitive code, like scaffolding. It's OK with boring, generic stuff. In other words, they're OK in use-cases that programmers need to eliminate, because it means there's high demand for a reusable library, some new syntax sugar, or an improved API.
- MaxikCZ 2y ago
  You can use niche libraries and still benefit from AI, basically anything I want to code is something that I don't think exists, and to bend API in a way that makes a generic library do just what I want means basically writing the same code, just instead of contributing to library its immediate, because the "piping" around it magically appears. I bet if it keeps improving at a current late for a decade, the occupation "programmer" will morph into "architect".
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Boilerplate and plumbing code isn't inherently bad, nor do you improve the codebase by factoring it down to zero with libraries and abstractions. As I've matured as a developer, I've appreciated certain types of boilerplate more and more because it's code that shows up in your git diffs. You don't need to chase down the code in some version of some library to see how something works. Of course, not all boilerplate is created equally.
  - andix 2y ago
    Boilerplate is better than bad abstractions. But good abstractions are far superior.
    - pertymcpert 2y ago
      The best abstraction is no abstraction.
      - andix 2y ago
        No. Edit: I'm not going to code asm just to be cool.
deterministic 2y ago
I use a custom code generator for that. It works much better than trying to explain to an AI exactly what I want. Yes it’s a it more work up front but worth it IMHO.

by kgeist 2y ago

I use LLMs for writing generic, repetitive code, like scaffolding. It's OK with boring, generic stuff. Sure it makes mistakes occasionally but usually it's a no-brainer to fix them.

andix 2y ago

I try to keep "boring" code to a minimum, by finding meaningful and simple abstractions. LLMs are especially bad handling those, because they were not trained on non-standard abstractions. Edit: most LLMs are great for spitting out some code that fulfills 90% of what you asked for. That's sometimes all you need. But we all know that the last 10% usually take the same amount of effort as the first 90%.

rafaelmn 2y ago
This is what got me in most sleepless nights, crunch and ass clenching production issues over my career. Simple repetitive shit is easy to reason about, debug and onboard people on. Naturally it's balancing act, and modern/popular frameworks are where most people landed, there's been a lot of iteration in this space for decades now.
- andix 2y ago
  I've made the opposite observation. Without proper abstractions code bases grow like crazy. At some point they are just a huge amount of copy, paste, and slight modification. The amount of code often grows exponentially. With more lines of code comes more effort to maintain it. After a few years those copy and pasted code pieces completely drift apart and create a lot of similar but different issues, that need to be addressed one by one. My approach for designing abstractions is always to make them composable (not this enterprise java inheritance chaos). To allow escaping them when needed.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    > At some point they are just a huge amount of copy, paste, and slight modification. I mean is that bad? Unless you keep having to have huge MRs that modify every copy/paste could you just let the code sit there and run forever? I only say this because I've been a maintenance programmer and I could only dream of a codebase like this. The idea that I get a Rollbar with a stack trace and the entirety of what the code actually does is laid bare right at the site of the error in a single file is amazing. And I can change it without affecting anything else?! I end up having to "unwind" all of the abstractions anyway because the nature of the job means I'm not intimately familiar with the codebase and don't just know where the real work happens.
    - notpushkin 2y ago
      There is a balance. Too much abstractions isn’t necessarily better than not enough abstractions. The optimal amount is usually non-zero, though.
      - rafaelmn 2y ago
        But the point is that modern/popular frameworks picked the low hanging fruit of abstraction, we had several iteration cycles over two+ decades of mainstream web tech. The landscape (browser capabilities, backend stacks) has settled over last ten years. We even had time to standardize on things somewhat. Building new abstractions at this point is almost always the wrong move. This is one of the points that LLMs will improve in software dev - they will kill the framework churn because they will work best on stuff already in training data.
simion314 2y ago
>most LLMs are great for spitting out some code that fulfills 90% of what you asked for. That's sometimes all you need. But we all know that the last 10% usually take the same amount of effort as the first 90%. The issue is if you have an LLm write for you 10k lines of code, where 100 lines are bugged. Now you need to debug the code you did not write and find the bugged code, you will waste similar amount of time. The issue is if you do not catch the bugs in time, you think you gain some hours but you will get upset customers because things went wrong because the code is weird. From my experience you need to work withan LLM and have the code done function by function, with your input and you checking it and calling bullshit when it does stupid things.
- xmprt 2y ago
  In my experience using LLMs, the 90% is less about buggy code and more about just ignoring 10% of the features that you require. So it will write code that's mostly correct in 100-1000 lines of code (not buggy) but then no matter how hard you try, it won't get the remaining 10% right and in the process, it will mess up parts of the 90% that was already working or end up writing another 1000 lines of undecipherable code to get 97% there but still never 100% unless you're building something that's not that unique.
  - andix 2y ago
    Exactly my experience. It's always missing something. And the generated code often can't be extended to fulfil those missing aspects.

Terr_ 2y ago

> I use LLMs for writing generic, repetitive code, like scaffolding. It's OK with boring, generic stuff. In other words, they're OK in use-cases that programmers need to eliminate, because it means there's high demand for a reusable library, some new syntax sugar, or an improved API.

MaxikCZ 2y ago
You can use niche libraries and still benefit from AI, basically anything I want to code is something that I don't think exists, and to bend API in a way that makes a generic library do just what I want means basically writing the same code, just instead of contributing to library its immediate, because the "piping" around it magically appears. I bet if it keeps improving at a current late for a decade, the occupation "programmer" will morph into "architect".
hombre_fatal 2y ago
Boilerplate and plumbing code isn't inherently bad, nor do you improve the codebase by factoring it down to zero with libraries and abstractions. As I've matured as a developer, I've appreciated certain types of boilerplate more and more because it's code that shows up in your git diffs. You don't need to chase down the code in some version of some library to see how something works. Of course, not all boilerplate is created equally.
- andix 2y ago
  Boilerplate is better than bad abstractions. But good abstractions are far superior.
  - pertymcpert 2y ago
    The best abstraction is no abstraction.
    - andix 2y ago
      No. Edit: I'm not going to code asm just to be cool.

deterministic 2y ago

I use a custom code generator for that. It works much better than trying to explain to an AI exactly what I want. Yes it’s a it more work up front but worth it IMHO.