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For most code stuff you don't check the answer against the documentation - you write the code and run it and see if it works. That's always a better signal th
by simonw 8mo ago
For most code stuff you don't check the answer against the documentation - you write the code and run it and see if it works.
That's always a better signal than anything that official documentation might tell you.
- 20k 8mo agoThat seems like a strong error, you have no idea if it works or if it just happens to work
- simonw 8mo agoIf you're good at programming you can usually tell exactly why it worked or didn't work. That's how we've all worked before coding agents came along too - you don't blindly assume the snippet you pasted off StackOverflow will work, you try it and poke at it and use it to build a firm mental model of whether it's the right thing or not.
- 20k 8mo agoSure. A big part of how I'd know that the function I'm calling does what I think it does, is by reading the source documentation associated with it Does it have any threading preconditions? Any weird quirks? Any strange UB? That's stuff you can't find out just by testing. You can ask the LLM, but then you have to read the docs anyway to check its answer
- simonw 8mo agoI envy you for the universally high quality of documentation that the code you are working with has!