alexv
mhoyeEvery developer in the world thinks reading code is harder than writing code and every devtools vendor in the world is trying to charge you money for a button you can click that lets you read code instead of writing it.
Aurimas Černius@mhoye at least IDEs are consistent at providing assistance predominantly for writing code, not so much for reading it. They gladly show me auto-completion drop down offering to write if for me, yet a good portion of them struggle at clearly highlighting the matching brace.
Moz@aurisc4 @mhoye I lookj specifically for code navigation. That's one of the big things that distinguishes an IDE from a text editor. When that doesn't work the tool is broken (Rust is especially bad for this - cargo will install whatever you like but good luck finding a tool that lets you jump from your call to the source code)
Apocraphilia@mhoye exactly. I already have a mechanism for generating subtly wrong code that I then have to debug - it's called a junior developer. And while I get zero value from explaining to an LLM how it's wrong, the junior learns, and adds steadily increasing value to my company, with each thing I teach them.
MikeStok@mhoye my experience of reading much (not all) code is that it’s like eating shit to try and understand what the food tasted like and the conversation at the meal was about.
Evert Pot@mhoye bit wild because I feel writing code is so much harder to me than reading!
Pavlo Shadov@mhoye good point 🤔
rivets@mhoye reading code (that's not yours) is always hard because you are always rewriting it in your head to make it correct.....
@rivets So, the _fascinating_ thing about generative code adoption is that _senior developers do that without realizing it_.
That is, senior devs can -and _do_ - take generative code output, go through close-enough code and correct it to what they need, and gain productivity thereby, and they _barely even realize they're doing it_. Junior devs don't have the experience or confidence to know what needs correcting, and end up in the weeds.
@mhoye well, as a very senior developer (old) I don't use generative code at all :-)
Benjamin Smedberg@mhoye I read this toot twice before I realized you were talking about LLMs. I would totally pay top-$$ for a good "explain this code to me" button!
@bsmedberg It is with heavy heart that I must inform you that this is something people are using LLMs like crazy for now, autogenerating documentation.
Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉@mhoye like an intern that lies all the time and can't learn from mistakes.
smxi@mhoye reading bad code or LLM generated gibberish is hard granted but reading good (aka clear readable) code is far easier than writing non trivial logic. The formula which I scoffed at until I realized that year in/out it was accurate is you write 10 lines of logic per day, max. Excluding copy/paste code blocks. Research testing debugging refactors 90+% of time. Linus calls it 1% inspiration 99% perspiration. I think that applies to all non trivial code.