2 ms·
Well how did they rewrite it? If you do it in two phases, then it should be fine right? Phase 1: extract requirements from original product (ideally not its co
by andai 8mo ago
Well how did they rewrite it? If you do it in two phases, then it should be fine right?
Phase 1: extract requirements from original product (ideally not its code).
Phase 2: implement them without referencing the original product or code.
I wrote a simple "clean room" LLM pipeline, but the requirements just ended up being an exact description of the code, which defeated the purpose.
My aim was to reduce bloat, but my system had the opposite effect! Because it replicated all the incidental crap, and then added even more "enterprisey" crap on top of it.
I am not sure if it's possible to solve it with prompting. Maybe telling it to derive the functionality from the code? I haven't tried that, and not sure how well it would work.
I think this requirements phase probably cannot be automated very effectively.
- AlexandrB 8mo agoHow do you do phase 2 with an LLM when the LLM is likely trained on the original source code? Isn't this equivalent of "rewriting" Harry Potter by describing the plot to an LLM trained on the original books[1]? [1] https://arstechnica.com/features/2025/06/study-metas-llama-3-1-can-recall-42-percent-of-the-first-harry-potter-book/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2025/06/study-metas-llama-3...
- duskdozer 8mo agoWell, check out the "clean rewrite" design document, directly: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/commit/f51f523506a73f89f0f9538fd31be458d007ab93 https://github.com/chardet/chardet/commit/f51f523506a73f89f0... referenced in https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327#issuecomment-4005195078 https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327#issuecomment-4...
- zvr 8mo agoWriting in a plan "no GPL/LGPL code" does not actually mean "forget all the GPL/LGPL code that you have ever seen, so that you start from a clean slate".
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- vunderba 8mo agoAgreed, no amount of system/user prompt directives change the fact that the LLM has already been trained on copyrighted code. It's amazing how many people fail to grasp that. This is the "Don't think of a pink elephant" fallacy all over again.