5 ms·

Im working on some website and created some custom menu. Nothing fancy. AI got it done after some tries and I was happy as web development is not my area of exp

by dm270 11mo ago

Im working on some website and created some custom menu. Nothing fancy. AI got it done after some tries and I was happy as web development is not my area of expertise. After some time I realized the menu results to scrolling when it shouldn’t and wanted to make the parent container expand. This was impossible as the AI did a rather unusual implementation even for such a limited use case. Best part: my task now is impossible to solve with AI as it doesn’t really get its own code. I resulted to actually just looking into CSS and the docs and realized there is a MUCH simpler way to solve all of my issues. Turns out sometimes the next guy who has to do maintenance is oneself.

Terr_ 11mo ago
> Turns out sometimes the next guy who has to do maintenance is oneself. Over the years I've been well-served by putting lots of comments into tickets like "here's the SQL query I used to check for X" or "an easy local repro of this bug is to disable Y", etc. It may not always be useful to others... but Future Me tends to be glad of it when a similar issue pops up months later.
- piva00 11mo ago
  On the same boat, I've learnt to leave breadcrumbs for the future quite a long time ago, and it's paid off many, many times. After it becomes second-nature is really relaxing to know I have left all the context I could muster around, comments in tickets, comments in the code referencing a decision, well-written commit messages for anything a little non-trivial. I learnt that peppering all the "whys" around is just being a good citizen in the codebase, even if only for Future Me.
- dvfjsdhgfv 11mo ago
  Agree completely, while "what" is completely redundant most of the time, a couple of "why"s can be of immense help later, to oneself and others.
thefz 11mo ago
> it doesn’t really get its own code It doesn’t really get its own anything, as it is unable to "get". It's just a probabilistic machine spitting out the next token
- Kudos 11mo ago
  Hey, I think everyone understands how they work by now and the pedantry isn't helpful.
  - BoredPositron 11mo ago
    Its a tale worth repeating because a minuscule percentage of people know or pretend to know how it works. Our view might be a bit skewed here on hackernews but normal people believe llms are thinking machines.
  - thefz 11mo ago
    Then if it can't really reason on its own creation how do you expect it to be correct in what it does if it's simply regurgitating code parsed online?
  - hitarpetar 11mo ago
    actually I'm not sure everyone does
- threatofrain 11mo ago
  "Getting things" is a matter of performance, not about the underlying hardware. If I'm an idiot who knows nothing about programming, but every time I slam the keyboard we get good programs, then how useful is it to discuss whether I am in fact empty-headed?
  - thefz 11mo ago
    But the discussion here is that it does not output good programs at all.
    - 11mo ago

by dm270 11mo ago

Terr_ 11mo ago

> Turns out sometimes the next guy who has to do maintenance is oneself. Over the years I've been well-served by putting lots of comments into tickets like "here's the SQL query I used to check for X" or "an easy local repro of this bug is to disable Y", etc. It may not always be useful to others... but Future Me tends to be glad of it when a similar issue pops up months later.

piva00 11mo ago
On the same boat, I've learnt to leave breadcrumbs for the future quite a long time ago, and it's paid off many, many times. After it becomes second-nature is really relaxing to know I have left all the context I could muster around, comments in tickets, comments in the code referencing a decision, well-written commit messages for anything a little non-trivial. I learnt that peppering all the "whys" around is just being a good citizen in the codebase, even if only for Future Me.
dvfjsdhgfv 11mo ago
Agree completely, while "what" is completely redundant most of the time, a couple of "why"s can be of immense help later, to oneself and others.

thefz 11mo ago

> it doesn’t really get its own code It doesn’t really get its own anything, as it is unable to "get". It's just a probabilistic machine spitting out the next token

Kudos 11mo ago
Hey, I think everyone understands how they work by now and the pedantry isn't helpful.
- BoredPositron 11mo ago
  Its a tale worth repeating because a minuscule percentage of people know or pretend to know how it works. Our view might be a bit skewed here on hackernews but normal people believe llms are thinking machines.
- thefz 11mo ago
  Then if it can't really reason on its own creation how do you expect it to be correct in what it does if it's simply regurgitating code parsed online?
- hitarpetar 11mo ago
  actually I'm not sure everyone does
threatofrain 11mo ago
"Getting things" is a matter of performance, not about the underlying hardware. If I'm an idiot who knows nothing about programming, but every time I slam the keyboard we get good programs, then how useful is it to discuss whether I am in fact empty-headed?
- thefz 11mo ago
  But the discussion here is that it does not output good programs at all.
  - 11mo ago