ProgrammerHumor
whoShouldWeBelieve
Discussion
When you ask if your code is good and the senior dev's soul leaves his body, but the intern still tryna be supportive. 😂
Honestly, I am a medior dev and giving tasks to a junior dev. The code she writes is quite messy and I sometimes feel like it would need to be completely rewritten. I don't want to discourage her though, because she's very bright and eager. I struggle with how to handle this tbh.
Pick one thing to focus upon and advise on how to improve it. Don't go wholesale into every little detail as that's overwhelming. It's all about small guidances to make code more readable and giving confidence in their abilities. Confident coding is half the battle.
I started developing 25 years ago and this is how the lead developer handled me. Little things that give you a lightbulb moment and I fully appreciated how he nurtured me. I was a terrible coder back then, but those gentle nudges in the right direction set me on a path to being a decent one.
Cut to today and I'm now working with him again for the last 7 years. I'm now highlighting things to him to make his code more readable and we're now producing great stuff. It's almost symbiotic now as we can read each others code without even thinking about it. Makes code reviews a doddle.
Think of yourself as a mentor, rather than a critic.
Thanks, that's good advice!
In the past the compiler would tell me that my code was perfect
If compiles no bugs
Just unintended features
🤣
Yeah, the compiler will always validate you and all your smart decisions.
LLM is a new intern. You tell him 20 times what to do and he still produces garbage.
But then the intern becomes a senior dev after working for a long time, whereas the llm... well, doesn't.
BuT mUh AI wiLl gEt eXpOnenTialLy bEtTer iN dA fuTuRe!!! It wIlL taKe uR cOdInG jOB!!!!!
Management doesn't care... until.
And unlike a new intern, it NEVER learns.
Of course he thinks it looks good, he wrote it
LLM trick: does my code look good? Give me a review in the tone of Linus Torvald reviewing a PR
*proceeds to reject every piece of code you give it*
The best answer I ever got was "please read a book on concurrent computing from AFTER the Berlin Wall fell"... Broke my heart a little
We had a pissing contest on a project who can be more funny/insulting on a pr (bunch of young dudes)
A comment read something like: "This has enough extra chromosomes to build an extra human"
Don’t let an LLM exclusively review your code, BUT I have actually gotten some really great advice when I’m not sure about a small snippet of code by asking “what’s wrong with this code” or even better “wouldn’t this cause X issue”. As usual, the more experience you have (to judge whether the LLMs answer is full of shit) the better. I’ve even learned gotchas that I didn’t know about (that I googled in depth to confirm the LLMs veracity).
Same. It’s helpful for when I know the code I’ve written is bad (I mean like… more than usual) but I don’t have the mental capacity for figuring out a better way to do things.
The code in question:
``` import math
def flipsign(o): if math.abs(o) > o: return o + o*2 else: return o ```
What the absolute hell!?
But that’s not exactly on LLM. Any code that I haven’t written myself doesn’t look good to me.
I've seen rare exceptions to this rule.
There are some gems here and there. Some smart and beautiful code. But it's indeed seldom.
Amen
We have an LLM (not even sure which one) hooked up to "review" our PRs. And it's OUTRAGEOUSLY bad and time wasting. In the best case scenario what it comments is an obvious BS, and can be ignored without looking. But sometimes it looks real, i actually think for a moment "wow, seriously, did i really miss this?" I look there, and the case is actually handled properly, but i've wasted the time to actually look. I have yet to see it catch a real issue ONCE🤬
With all the AI craze out there, i really only found it to be useful as an advanced auto complete. Or to generate snippets of mostly boilerplate code. Or spit up cmake syntax i never remember. Stuff like that. But never serious stuff.
I work in academia and have to write papers
I then gave it to chatgpt for proofreading. then it tells me I should insert a comma in some sentences. then I look at the sentences and the comma is already there
Mine is bad that even AI don't like it.
They are both wrong
Does my code look good? LLM: Yes, but there are some flaws: [Hallucinates errors]
Senior Devs give you truth. LLMs give you confidence.
LLMs give you confidence.
Doing things wrong.
That's a problem.
seems to exploting with devs that is buthurt on AI in here lately..
All these colours, it's so pretty !
Take the median. Since the median can be any number in the middle, it can be any number in the interval (0, 1). Then, take the biggest number you can think of. With enough precision, that number approaches 1. Therefore, 1 is the answer both parties can agree on
LLM: yes because I wrote it.
The one with real intelligence who will be writing your performance review.
Sr LLM
Your code sucks it will never be good enough. Excuse me; I need to go cry about something unrelated.
Should fix to "LLM that wrote it"
But what would Tuvix say?
While i agree with the general point, most truly senior seniors have similar character to Tuvok, so their validation is like Yeti.
Some people claim to have seen it, but it's usually the ones that you would not believe.
Rhetorical question for an LLM.
It will always find something wrong. Like a toxic partner.
LLM is biased towards validating the user. Sr. Dev is biased towards their own opinions about how code should be written. The career move is to listen to what your senior has to say.
If you want to keep that work, right?
I suppose one has to differentiate between general good practices and preferences.
Even if you’re unhappy with the current work/tech stack/priorities it’s still the career move to accept your senior’s feedback.
I have personally made the mistake of telling my senior and manager that not using a code formatter leads to poor code readability and maintainability. They disagreed. I have not worked on a project without a code formatter since, but my life would have been easier if I embraced a more flexible mindset in that role. And yes I moved on from that role quickly because of numerous issues I took with the development strategy.
Huh, what would be your senior’s argument here?
If it's that kind of place, probably some variation of "because I'm the boss".
The manager said there’s no such thing as a style guide, you just see someone else’s code you like and you copy their style. The senior may just not have wanted to rock the boat, or he didn’t know what a formatter was. Not using a code formatter was far from being the most egregious technical decision these guys made.
The word you're looking for is Sycophant. AIs are Sycophants inherently.
I fucking hate the dictionary sometimes
It's not that hard, fucking hell
Now add another layer with "servile". (That one is less problematic, though, as the corresponding verb " serve" is a common word and you can guess from that context.)
Nah LLM will always fix something even if nothing needs fixing.
It's biased towards producing an output other than Yes/No.
Even if you take its own output and pass it back in, you'll get something. And that something often includes reverting changes it just told you to make.
Glazing language models GLM
Depends on how you ask the LLM, if you just ask it "does it look good?" It will validate you. If you ask it "pinpoint areas where the code can be improved" you might get some good answers*
* you have to understand what your code does or needs to achieve in order to understand if the suggestions even make sense.