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Is there anything about this project that seems LLM-generated? I've found that LLMs are particularly bad at writing Zig because the language evolves quickly, s
by mtlynch 1y ago
Is there anything about this project that seems LLM-generated?
I've found that LLMs are particularly bad at writing Zig because the language evolves quickly, so LLMs that are trained on Zig code from two years ago will write code that no longer compiles on modern Zig.
- 5- 1y agohttps://github.com/barddoo/zedis/blob/87321b04224b2e2e857b6704926952b47abf01cc/README.md#project-structure https://github.com/barddoo/zedis/blob/87321b04224b2e2e857b67... these seem to occur only in college assignment projects, and in the output of text generators trained on those.
- WD-42 1y agoI will never place emojis in any of my readmes ever again.
- chucky_z 1y agospell out 'development' with hammer emojis. bring ascii art back as emoji art. (i actually do this in slack messages and folks find it funny and annoying, but more funny)
- tayo42 1y agoPeople were doing this before llms, otherwise how did they learn it?
- WD-42 1y agoSure, but llms absolutely love to do it for some reason.
- tayo42 1y agoI just took a look at a Readme I had cursor write a couple months ago and there's no emojis
- johnisgood 1y agoYou can always have it in your custom prompt: "Do not use emojis, ever".
- pdntspa 1y agoI had a manager who did this in his slack messages
- adastra22 1y agoThat's why he said "never again"
- nine_k 1y agoHas been doing this for years, even before LLMs were a thing. No, not in college assignments; by the time emoji appeared, I had long since walked out of my PhD program and went to the industry. I put such emojis at the beginning of big headings, because my eyes detect compact shapes and colors faster than entire words and sentences. This helps me (and hopefully others) locate the right section easier. In Slack, I put large emojis at the beginning of messages that need to stand out. These are few, and emojis work well in this capacity. (Disclaimer: I may contain a large language model of some kind, but very definitely I cannot be reduced to it in any area of my activity.)
- adastra22 1y agoFWIW it is really confusing to me and others. What is this emoji supposed to mean? Heck if I know. But the telltale signs are far more than just that. The whole document is exactly the kind of README produced by Claude.
- MangoToupe 1y agoI had assumed they were referring to stuff like "Type-safe operations with compile-time guarantees". What a weird detail to add to a readme. And the whole section is like that. I wonder if that's part of a prompt leaking through.
- rmonvfer 1y agoAs an avid Claude Code user, I can tell you with 99% probability, that README is LLM-generated. This exactly the same structure and wording used by Claude (of course, it has some human modification because otherwise I’d filled with emojis) In my experience, when you work with something like agentic development tools, you describe your goals and give it some constraints like “use modern zig”, “always run tests”… and when you ask it to write a README, it will usually reproduce those constraints more or less verbatim. The same thing happens with the features section, it reads like instructions for an LLM. I might be wrong but I spend way too much time using Claude, Gemini, Codex… and IMHO it’s pretty obvious. But hey, I don’t think it’s a problem! I write a lot of code using LLMs, mostly for learning (and… ejem, some of it might end up in production) and I’ve always found them great tools for learning (supposing you use the appropriate context engineering and make sure the agent has access to updated docs and all of that). For example, I wanted to learn Rust so I half-vibed a GPUI-based chat client for LLMs that works just fine and surprisingly enough, I actually learned and even had some fun.
- adastra22 1y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted. This follows the LLM-generated-README template perfectly. And yeah, it usually ends up being a dumping ground for the constraints you gave it, almost verbatim.
- johnisgood 1y ago> But hey, I don’t think it’s a problem! I write a lot of code using LLMs, mostly for learning (and… ejem, some of it might end up in production) and I’ve always found them great tools for learning (supposing you use the appropriate context engineering and make sure the agent has access to updated docs and all of that). For example, I wanted to learn Rust so I half-vibed a GPUI-based chat client for LLMs that works just fine and surprisingly enough, I actually learned and even had some fun. As I wrote in another comment, it is not inherently a bad thing. I use LLMs too (while knowing what I am doing), and if the project works, why not?
- samiv 1y agoBut wait.. if the chatbot is writing then code then it is not you who is writing the code, but the chatbot.
- jasonjmcghee 1y agoI skimmed, for me it was this: https://github.com/barddoo/zedis/blob/87321b04224b2e2e857b6704926952b47abf01cc/src/kv_allocator.zig#L100 https://github.com/barddoo/zedis/blob/87321b04224b2e2e857b67... There seems to be a fair amount of stigma around using llms. And many people that use them are uncomfortable talking about it. It's a weird world. Depending on who is at the wheel, whether an llm is used _can_ make no difference. But the problem is, you can have no idea what you're doing and make something that feels like it was carefully hand-crafted by someone - a really great project - but there are hidden things or outright lies about functionality, often to the surprise of the author. Like, they weren't trying to mislead, just didn't take them time to see if it did all of what the LLM said it did.
- boredemployee 1y ago3 months ago I was vibe coding an idea and for some reason (and luck) I went to check a less important part of the code and saw that the LLM changed the env variable of an API key and hard coded the key explictly in the code. That was scary. I'm glad I saw it before PR and shit like that.
- barddoo 1y agoAgree. I used it mostly for getting ideas, the memory management for example, Gemini listed so many different ways of managing memory I didn’t even know existed. I know I wanted to pre allocate memory like tigerbeetle does, so the hybrid approach was perfect. Essentially it has 3 different allocators, a huge one for the cache, a arena allocator for context, intermediate state like pub/sub and temp one, for requests. It was 100% Gemini’s idea.
- johnisgood 1y agoI generally do not think it is a bad thing. I use LLMs too and I know what I am doing, so I do not know if it could be qualified as vibe coding. I think it is not inherently a bad thing to use LLMs, only if you have absolutely no clue about what you are doing, but even then, if the project is usable and as-is advertised, why not? shrugs As for the link, that is exactly the same code that caught my eye, besides the README.md itself. The LRU eviction thing is what GPT (and possibly other LLMs) always comes up with according to my experiences, and he could have just had it properly implemented then. :D Edit: I am glad author confirmed the use of an LLM. :P
- johnisgood 1y agoFair enough, but I have made a couple of projects in Odin using Claude, and Odin is evolving too, and it is much more obscure than Zig. I made these projects successfully by feeding the LLM the documentation of Odin and gave it example projects... thus, if I could create Odin projects (with some reiterations and hand-holding, true), then Zig should be even better.