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> LLM can wander through the codebase by itself and do research and build a "mental model" It can't really do that due to context length limitations.
by otabdeveloper4 1y ago
> LLM can wander through the codebase by itself and do research and build a "mental model"
It can't really do that due to context length limitations.
- lukan 1y agoI guess people are talking about different kinds of projects here in terms of project size.
- exe34 1y agoIt doesn't need the entire codebase, it just needs the call map, the function signatures, etc. It doesn't have to include everything in a call - but having access to all of it means it can pick what seems relevant.
- danielbln 1y agoYes, that's exactly right. The LLM gets a rough overview over the project (as you said, including function signatures and such) and will then decide what to open and use to complete/implement the objective.
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoIn a real project the call map and function signatures are millions of tokens themselves.
- exe34 1y agoFor sufficiently large values of real.
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoAnything less is not a "project", it's a "file".
- exe34 1y agoThat's right, there is no true Scotsman!
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoIncorrect attempt as fallacy baiting. If your repo map fits into 1000 tokens then your repo is small enough that you can just concatenate all the files together and feed the result as one prompt to the LLM. No, current LLM technology does not allow to process actual (i.e. large) repos.
- simonw 1y agoWhere's your cutoff for "large"?
- johnisgood 1y ago1k LOC is perfectly fine, I did not experience issues with Claude with most (not all) projects around ~1k LOC.
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoActual projects where you'd want some LLM help start with millions of lines of code, not thousands. With 1k lines of code you don't need an LLM, the entire source code can fit in one intern's head.
- simonw 1y agoHave you tried Claude Code yet? Even with it's 200,000 token limit it's still really impressive at diving through large codebases using find and grep.
- johnisgood 1y agoThe OP mentioned having LLM issues with 1k LOC, so I suppose he would have problems with millions. :D