Ryan Olson
I think that not worrying about sounding stupid when asking questions at work is kind of a work super power. I think I'm OK at it with humans, but dang do the LLMs take this to a whole new level. No qualms whatsoever about asking them "please explain this very basic facet of the language I get paid handsomely to work in."
Feb 13 at 8:00pmWeb
Show threadMark DominusFeb 13

@BikesAndBBQ Same! Just gotta be careful to remember that the answer might be wrong.

The other day Claude wrote code that used the Python `extend` method, which I didn't know about. I asked how `S.extend(b)` was different from `S += b` and it gave me some hooey about how the first one mutates S whereas the second one produces a new array and then rebinds S to it.

Fortunately another one of my work skills is being skeptical of other people's claims about how stuff works.

Show threadfrewFeb 13
@mjd @BikesAndBBQ strong suggest: getting the LLM to do TDD. Jesse’s superpowers can help with this but even just asking them to go through the motions yourself is great
Show threadMark DominusFeb 13

@frew @BikesAndBBQ Maybe I'll try that. My current approach is to treat the LLM's code like a junior developer's, to review it carefully and discuss it at length, which I enjoy.

In this case the code it wrote with `.extend` was correct, it was only its explanation of S += b that was wrong.

Show threadfrewFeb 13
@mjd @BikesAndBBQ yeah nothing wrong with that, I just like that with this technique you tamp down a bit on fixes that don’t work.