Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

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When you use frameworks or libraries, you are trusting (hoping) the author(s) spent the time to get it right. At a minimum, the framework/library is documented in literal documentation and/or code that's static and can be read and understood by you. Ask an LLM to do a task 3 times, you'll get 3 different outputs - they're non-deterministic.

I catch a lot of nonsensical and inefficient code when I have that "back and forth" described above - particularly when it comes to architectural decisions. An agent producing hundreds or thousands of lines of code, and making architectural decisions all in one-go will mean catching those problems will be vastly more challenging or impossible.

I've also found reviewing LLM generated code to be much more difficult and grueling than reviewing my own or another human's code. It's just a mental/brain drain. I've wasted so many hours wondering if I'm just dumb and missing something or not-understanding some code - only to later realize the LLM was on the fritz. Having little or no previous context to understand the code creates a "standing at the foot of Mt. Everest" feeling constantly, over and over.

>I've also found reviewing LLM generated code to be much more difficult and grueling than reviewing my own or another human's code.

absolute opposite here.

LLMs , for better or worse, generally stick to paradigms if they have the codebase in front of them to read.

This is rarely the case when dealing with an amateur's code.

Amateurs write functional-ish code. TDD-ish tests. If the language they're using supports it types will be spotty or inconsistent. Variable naming schemes will change with the current trend when the author wrote that snippet ; and whatever format they want to use that day will use randomized vocabulary with lots of non-speak like 'value', or 'entry' in ambiguous roles.

LLMs write gibberish all day, BUT will generally abide by style documents fairly well. Humams... don't.

These things evolve as the codebase matures, obviously, but that's because it was polished into something good. LLMs can't reason well and their logic sometimes sucks, but if the AGENTS.md says that all variables shall be cat breeds -- damnit that's what it'll do (to a fault).

but my point : real logic and reasoning problems become easier to spot when you're not correcting stupid things all day. it's essentially always about knowing how to use the model and whatever platform it's jumping from. Don't give it the keys to create the logical foundation of the code, use it to polish brass.

garbage in -> garbage out ain't going anywhere.

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