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Interesting to hear the industrial SWE perspective, it is very different. I am a scientific research engineer (bioinformatics), and here no one cares much abou
by sjdv1982 6mo ago
Interesting to hear the industrial SWE perspective, it is very different.
I am a scientific research engineer (bioinformatics), and here no one cares much about covering all the possible code paths.
What we care about is if the code computes "the correct thing", i.e. that it represents the underlying science.
No such guarantee with LLMs. But no such guarantee without LLMs, either (the "code growing above our heads" has happened already, a long time ago). Still, I would say that LLMs are a big net positive for us: they are better at checking such things than we are.
- DerArzt 6mo agoThe difference is "I need this to work the one time" vs "I need this to fail less than 1 out of 100 times". A dirt ramp can help you get a truck up and over a 2 meter wall, but a properly built concrete ramp will work better long term.
- sjdv1982 6mo agoYes, exactly. There are some tools that are used over and over again. But apart from that, dirt ramps are the norm in scientific computing. Once it gets you over the 2 meter wall of publication, it's disposable.