4 ms·

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with

by Loughla 1mo ago

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

1718627440 1mo ago
It's a well-known trope, that it's harder to read code than to write it, and review is more complicated than to read it, so I do not understand what you want to imply?
- blackqueeriroh 1mo ago
  Maybe it is for people who have written code all their lives, but as someone who started with reading code and has read far more code than I’ve ever written, reading code is WAY easier for me.
  - sarchertech 1mo ago
    If you have little experience writing code, do you know that you actually understand what you’re reading though? For example could you reproduce the code you read immediately after writing it? It’s very easy to “read code” if you’re just reading for surface level understanding.
  - 1718627440 1mo ago
    If it's easier for you to convert written code into mental models than the other way around, you are either a incredible smart and skilled person and a good programmer and should be able to convert that into a job and money easily, or you can't really write code at all.
a1o 1mo ago
Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. The original authors have no idea what their agents are writing, these are mostly badly quality models (people doing this are not only cutting corners, but also using the less amount of money/tokens to do so). If the agent creates 200, 400 or whatever PRs and get 5 in the agent is still “winning” for the person instructing it. The maintainers though have to filter these out on the other side. A common case is a fix to something that was already fixed simply because the agent worked on old code assumptions.
- sebmellen 1mo ago
  Just had a thought, what if you made new contributors write a human-authored essay on why they’re submitting a patch, and then check it against Pangram? Pangram is really accurate from what I’ve found…
  - aleph_minus_one 1mo ago
    > Just had a thought, what if you made new contributors write a human-authored essay on why they’re submitting a patch, and then check it against Pangram? The problem is writing such an essay takes magnitudes more of an effort for people who are not native English (or whatever the language is in which discussions are done about the project) speakers. Also, relatedly, essays written by non-native English speakers often get considered to be AI-written by common AI detection systems, even though no AI was involved when writing them; see for example > I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. > https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-like-chatgpt https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li...
    - sebmellen 1mo ago
      I’m as skeptical of the AI writing detection as anyone else, but I’ve been trying to beat Pangram v4 for the last week and it’s essentially impossible.
      - sarchertech 1mo ago
        Have you tried in both directions though? You need to test both sensitivity and specificity.
        sebmellen 1mo ago
        Yes. It’s scarily accurate. They have a blog post on it if you look up “Pangram v4 System Card“
- newswasboring 1mo ago
pydry 1mo ago
It depends entirely on how much slop they are flooded with.
catlifeonmars 1mo ago
Probably a time waster because of the intermediate patch contributor. It’s like a game of telephone at worst, at best the reviewer could just use their own LLM and get the same result. Here’s my hot take: maybe code contributions are obsoleted by coding agents. No one will accept outside contributions because it’s faster to do it themselves.
sgarland 1mo ago
[dead]
sarchertech 1mo ago
Well historically the consensus was that it was harder to read code than to write it, but that leads to uncomfortable conclusions these days, so that bit of common wisdom has mostly been ejected. > I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts? I’m not trying to be mean, but this comment is basically “I have no experience with this topic, but it can just be boiled down to this one simple question right?”
- Loughla 1mo ago
  I don't think that's being mean at all, and it's valid. Yes that's literally why I asked it. Simple questions, here, regularly elicit long form explanations. I was interested in this topic and have no experience. So I thought I'd try a broad overview type question to see if I could learn something today.
  - sarchertech 1mo ago
    I think I read it as a bit more flippant than you meant it because it was worded assuming the answer was yes.
bch 1mo ago
> The question becomes [...] "A question is...". To my mind not the most important question, if one plays-out to a logical conclusion the scenario you're proposing. > [...] if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? No - and that's bordering-on (if not fully) rude disrespect of reviewers time and effort. One way to think of this is in terms of Brandolinis Law[0]. Pushing work back to submitters is going to have to happen. Low-effort "submissions" are first and foremost "low-effort" - that's going to have to be driven home. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
account42 1mo ago
Even before automation, most first time PRs were a negative time contribution to the project. The only value of them was that some contributors would become trusted project members.

by Loughla 1mo ago

1718627440 1mo ago

It's a well-known trope, that it's harder to read code than to write it, and review is more complicated than to read it, so I do not understand what you want to imply?

blackqueeriroh 1mo ago
Maybe it is for people who have written code all their lives, but as someone who started with reading code and has read far more code than I’ve ever written, reading code is WAY easier for me.
- sarchertech 1mo ago
  If you have little experience writing code, do you know that you actually understand what you’re reading though? For example could you reproduce the code you read immediately after writing it? It’s very easy to “read code” if you’re just reading for surface level understanding.
- 1718627440 1mo ago
  If it's easier for you to convert written code into mental models than the other way around, you are either a incredible smart and skilled person and a good programmer and should be able to convert that into a job and money easily, or you can't really write code at all.

a1o 1mo ago

Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. The original authors have no idea what their agents are writing, these are mostly badly quality models (people doing this are not only cutting corners, but also using the less amount of money/tokens to do so). If the agent creates 200, 400 or whatever PRs and get 5 in the agent is still “winning” for the person instructing it. The maintainers though have to filter these out on the other side. A common case is a fix to something that was already fixed simply because the agent worked on old code assumptions.

sebmellen 1mo ago
Just had a thought, what if you made new contributors write a human-authored essay on why they’re submitting a patch, and then check it against Pangram? Pangram is really accurate from what I’ve found…
- aleph_minus_one 1mo ago
  > Just had a thought, what if you made new contributors write a human-authored essay on why they’re submitting a patch, and then check it against Pangram? The problem is writing such an essay takes magnitudes more of an effort for people who are not native English (or whatever the language is in which discussions are done about the project) speakers. Also, relatedly, essays written by non-native English speakers often get considered to be AI-written by common AI detection systems, even though no AI was involved when writing them; see for example > I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. > https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-like-chatgpt https://marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-i-dont-write-li...
  - sebmellen 1mo ago
    I’m as skeptical of the AI writing detection as anyone else, but I’ve been trying to beat Pangram v4 for the last week and it’s essentially impossible.
    - sarchertech 1mo ago
      Have you tried in both directions though? You need to test both sensitivity and specificity.
      - sebmellen 1mo ago
        Yes. It’s scarily accurate. They have a blog post on it if you look up “Pangram v4 System Card“
newswasboring 1mo ago

pydry 1mo ago

It depends entirely on how much slop they are flooded with.

catlifeonmars 1mo ago

Probably a time waster because of the intermediate patch contributor. It’s like a game of telephone at worst, at best the reviewer could just use their own LLM and get the same result. Here’s my hot take: maybe code contributions are obsoleted by coding agents. No one will accept outside contributions because it’s faster to do it themselves.

sgarland 1mo ago

[dead]

sarchertech 1mo ago

Well historically the consensus was that it was harder to read code than to write it, but that leads to uncomfortable conclusions these days, so that bit of common wisdom has mostly been ejected. > I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts? I’m not trying to be mean, but this comment is basically “I have no experience with this topic, but it can just be boiled down to this one simple question right?”

Loughla 1mo ago
I don't think that's being mean at all, and it's valid. Yes that's literally why I asked it. Simple questions, here, regularly elicit long form explanations. I was interested in this topic and have no experience. So I thought I'd try a broad overview type question to see if I could learn something today.
- sarchertech 1mo ago
  I think I read it as a bit more flippant than you meant it because it was worded assuming the answer was yes.

bch 1mo ago

> The question becomes [...] "A question is...". To my mind not the most important question, if one plays-out to a logical conclusion the scenario you're proposing. > [...] if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? No - and that's bordering-on (if not fully) rude disrespect of reviewers time and effort. One way to think of this is in terms of Brandolinis Law[0]. Pushing work back to submitters is going to have to happen. Low-effort "submissions" are first and foremost "low-effort" - that's going to have to be driven home. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law

account42 1mo ago

Even before automation, most first time PRs were a negative time contribution to the project. The only value of them was that some contributors would become trusted project members.