Matthew GarrettMar 7

My job as a senior developer with a team of juniors is to figure out what to write, sketch a PoC as guidance, and then delegate the actual implementation to them. I'm going to look at that, explain misunderstandings or poor style choices, and guide them into implementing something that meets our standards.

I don't think LLMs can do my job yet. But I think we're getting shockingly close to them being able to do the other part. And I'm worried how we're going to get more senior developers.

Show threadGregMar 7
@mjg59 every mid-to-large FOSS project is seeing their "Good First Issue"s getting sniped by 20 LLM bots. Those exist to feed new contributors into dedicated ones. If you cut the bottom rungs off the ladder, how is anyone going to be able to get to the top?
Show threadMatthew GarrettMar 7
@greg yeah, exactly. I've helped people turn into senior devs, I don't know how to turn an LLM into one - embodying good taste is a different problem to generating code that meets a functional description
Show threadPaul McMillanMar 7

@mjg59 @greg I agree wholeheartedly with the junior pipeline problem, though I suspect that we end up with junior devs who are good at piloting the models, and learn to debug even hard problems within that context.

We didn't stop being able to computer when people stopped learning assembly or c, I hope we have a similar outcome here.

Show threadChris-EvelynMar 7
@PaulM @mjg59 @greg But we could stop learning assembly because compilers are deterministic and don’t hallucinate. That’s not the case with LLMs.
Show threadPaul McMillanMar 7
@chris_evelyn @mjg59 @greg to be pedantic, computers are only sorta kinda mostly deterministic if you squint at them just right. From the perspective of any given program executing in a modern operating system, there's a whole lot happening around it which is completely opaque, even if execution mostly proceeds in an apparently sequential fashion.
Show threadChris-EvelynMar 7

@PaulM @mjg59 @greg That argument is bullshit and I’m getting fucking tired of it.

How often did you have to check assembly output lately because a compiler did something different from what you expressed in your code?

Show threadMatthew GarrettMar 7
@chris_evelyn @PaulM @greg I'm a kernel developer, this happens to me more than you'd think
Show threadChris-EvelynMar 7

@mjg59 @PaulM @greg See my other answer, I forgot that I‘m replying to professional edge case handlers in this thread so had to dial it back to „normal“ programming.

Out of curiosity: Do LLMs work well for kernel dev?

Show threadMatthew GarrettMar 7
@chris_evelyn @PaulM @greg massively depends, a *lot* of the kernel is super boilerplate and it's largely fine at that, and then you reach the point where you're dealing with CPU errata and you're going to have a bad time. I wouldn't say no to it in general (and we know chunks of Linux are already LLM developed), but I'd have several concerns around its use in more specialised areas
Show threadDemi Marie ObenourMar 8
@mjg59 @chris_evelyn @PaulM @greg Any examples of CPU eratta being relevant, other than the obvious security holes?
Show threadAlan Coopersmith
@alwayscurious @mjg59 @chris_evelyn @PaulM @greg
there's also performance related errata, like https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000055650/processors.html though that needs to be worked around in the compiler/assembler and in the kernel mostly only affects things that manipulate code (live patching, JIT, etc.).
Provides you with information about the Jump Conditional Code Erratum and how to obtain the MCU.

Provides you with information about the Jump Conditional Code Erratum and how to obtain the MCU.

Intel
Mar 10 at 5:19pmWeb