3 ms·

does this work? there is no more need for writing high level docs?

bigmadshoe 7mo ago
LLMs can tell you what the code does but not why the developer chose to do it that way. Also, large codebases are harder to understand. But projects like these are simple to discuss with an LLM.
- stronglikedan 7mo ago
  > LLMs can tell you what the code does but not why the developer chose to do it that way. Do LLMs not take comments into consideration? (Serious question - I'm just getting into this stuff)
  - dr_hooo 7mo ago
    They do (it's just text), if they are there...
  - bigmadshoe 7mo ago
    They do. Think of it like a very intelligent but somewhat unreliable engineer you can hire to look at your code. They have no context about the codebase beyond what’s written in the source code, or any docs you give them. What I meant was the docs might provide explanations about the problems the codebase solves, design decisions, the abstractions chosen, etc that wouldn’t live in a particular source file. Any discussion someone has with an LLM about the codebase will lack this context in the explanations given if docs don’t exist.
arcanemachiner 7mo ago
> does this work? Absolutely. If you loaded this into an agentic coding harness with a decent model, I can practically guarantee it would be able to help you figure out what's going on. > there is no more need for writing high level docs? Absolutely not. That would be like exploring a cave without a flashlight, knowing that you could just feel your way around in the dark instead. Code is not always self-documenting, and can often tell you how it was written, but not why.
- stronglikedan 7mo ago
  > If you loaded this into an agentic coding harness with a decent model, I can practically guarantee it would be able to help you figure out what's going on. My non-coder but technically savvy boss has been doing this lately to great success. It's nice because I spend less time on it since the model has taken my place for the most part.
  - libria 7mo ago
    > since the model has taken my place for the most part Hah, you realize the same thing is going on in your boss's head right? The pie chart of Things-I-Need-stronglikedan-For just shrank tiny bit...
    - dominotw 7mo ago
      my last employer was using ai to rank developers on most impactful code their prs are shipping.
sigmoid10 7mo ago
There are so many blogs and tutorials about this stuff in particular, I wouldn't worry about it being outside the training data distribution for modern LLMs. If you have a scarce topic in some obscure language I'd be more careful when learning from LLMs.

LLMs can tell you what the code does but not why the developer chose to do it that way. Also, large codebases are harder to understand. But projects like these are simple to discuss with an LLM.

stronglikedan 7mo ago
> LLMs can tell you what the code does but not why the developer chose to do it that way. Do LLMs not take comments into consideration? (Serious question - I'm just getting into this stuff)
- dr_hooo 7mo ago
  They do (it's just text), if they are there...
- bigmadshoe 7mo ago
  They do. Think of it like a very intelligent but somewhat unreliable engineer you can hire to look at your code. They have no context about the codebase beyond what’s written in the source code, or any docs you give them. What I meant was the docs might provide explanations about the problems the codebase solves, design decisions, the abstractions chosen, etc that wouldn’t live in a particular source file. Any discussion someone has with an LLM about the codebase will lack this context in the explanations given if docs don’t exist.

arcanemachiner 7mo ago

> does this work? Absolutely. If you loaded this into an agentic coding harness with a decent model, I can practically guarantee it would be able to help you figure out what's going on. > there is no more need for writing high level docs? Absolutely not. That would be like exploring a cave without a flashlight, knowing that you could just feel your way around in the dark instead. Code is not always self-documenting, and can often tell you how it was written, but not why.

stronglikedan 7mo ago
> If you loaded this into an agentic coding harness with a decent model, I can practically guarantee it would be able to help you figure out what's going on. My non-coder but technically savvy boss has been doing this lately to great success. It's nice because I spend less time on it since the model has taken my place for the most part.
- libria 7mo ago
  > since the model has taken my place for the most part Hah, you realize the same thing is going on in your boss's head right? The pie chart of Things-I-Need-stronglikedan-For just shrank tiny bit...
  - dominotw 7mo ago
    my last employer was using ai to rank developers on most impactful code their prs are shipping.

sigmoid10 7mo ago

There are so many blogs and tutorials about this stuff in particular, I wouldn't worry about it being outside the training data distribution for modern LLMs. If you have a scarce topic in some obscure language I'd be more careful when learning from LLMs.