5 ms·

I contend that, by far and away the biggest difference between entirely human-generated slop and AI-assisted stupidity is the irrational reaction that some peop

I contend that, by far and away the biggest difference between entirely human-generated slop and AI-assisted stupidity is the irrational reaction that some people have to AI-assisted stuff.

hatefulmoron 11mo ago
Calling things "slop" is just begging the question. The real differentiating factor is that, in the past, "human-generated slop" at least took effort to produce. Perhaps, in the process of producing it, the human notices what's happening and reconsiders (or even better, improves it such that it's no longer "slop".) Claude has no such inhibitions. So, when you look at a big bunch of code that you haven't read yet, are you more or less confident when you find out an LLM wrote it?
- WalterSear 11mo ago
  I have pretty much the same amount of confidence when I receive AI generated or non-AI generated code to review: my confidence is based on the person guiding the LLM, and their ability to that. Much more so than before, I'll comfortably reject a PR that is hard to follow, for any reason, including size. IMHO, the biggest change that LLMs have brought to the table is that clean code and refactoring are no longer expensive, and should no longer be bargained for, neglected or given the lip service that they have received throughout most of my career. Test suites and documentation, too. (Given the nature of working with LLMs, I also suspect that clean, idiomatic code is more important than ever, since LLMs have presumably been trained on that, but this is just a personal superstition, that is probably increasingly false, but also feels harmless) The only time I think it is appropriate to land a large amount of code at once is if it is a single act of entirely brain dead refactoring, doing nothing new, such as renaming a single variable across an entire codebase, or moving/breaking/consolidating a single module or file. And there better be tests. Otherwise, get an LLM to break things up and make things easier for me to understand, for crying out loud: there are precious few reasons left not to make reviewing PRs as easy as possible. So, I posit that the emotional reaction from certain audiences is still the largest, most exhausting difference.
  - grey-area 11mo ago
    clean code and refactoring are no longer expensive Are you contending that LLMs produce clean code?
    - WalterSear 11mo ago
      They do, for many people. Perhaps you need to change your approach.
      - dmurray 11mo ago
        If you can produce a clean design, the LLM can write the code.
        fragmede 11mo ago
        Unless you're doing something fabulously unique (at which point I'm jealous you get to work on such a thing), they're pretty good at cribbing the design of things if it's something that's been well documented online (canonically, a CRUD SaaS app, with minor UI modification to support your chosen niche).
        WalterSear 11mo ago
        And if you are doing something fabulously unique, the LLM can still write all the code around it, likely help with many of the components, give you at least a first pass at tests, and enable rapid, meaningful refactors after each feature PR.
        WalterSear 11mo ago
        I think maybe there's another step too - breaking the design up into small enough peices that the LLM can follow it, and you can understand the output.
        TexanFeller 11mo ago
- fragmede 11mo ago
  If you try and one shot it, sure, but if you question Claude, point out the errors of its ways, tell it to refactor and ultrathink, point out that two things have similar functionality and could be merged. It can write unhinged code with duplicate unused variable definitions that don't work, and it'll fix it up if you call it out, or you can just do it yourself. (cue questions of if, in that case, it would just be faster to do it yourself.)
  - hatefulmoron 11mo ago
    I have a Claude max subscription. When I think of bad Claude code, I'm not thinking about unused variable definitions. I'm thinking about the times you turn on ultrathink, allow it to access tools and negotiate it's solution, and it still churns out an over complicated yet partially correct solution that breaks. I totally trust Claude to fix linting errors.
    - WalterSear 11mo ago
      If you are getting garbage out, you are asking it for too much at once. Don't ask for solutions - ask for implementations.
      - hatefulmoron 11mo ago
        Distinction without a difference. I'm talking about its output being insufficient, whatever word you want to use for output.
        WalterSear 11mo ago
        And I'm arguing that if the output wasn't sufficient, neither was your input. You could also be asking for too much in one go, though that's becoming less and less of a problem as LLMs improve.
        hatefulmoron 11mo ago
        You're proposing a truism: if you don't get a good result, it's either because your query is bad or because the LLM isn't good enough to provide a good result. Yes, that is how this works. I'm talking about the case where you're providing a good query and getting poor results. Claiming that this can be solved by more LLM conversations and ultrathink is cope.
- HelloNurse 11mo ago
  > Perhaps, in the process of producing it, the human notices what's happening and reconsiders (or even better, improves it such that it's no longer "slop".) Given the same ridiculously large and complex change, if it is handwritten only a seriously insensitive and arrogant crackpot could, knowing what's inside, submit it with any expectation that you accept it without a long and painful process instead of improving it to the best of their ability; on the other hand using LLM assistance even a mildly incompetent but valuable colleague or contributor, someone you care about, might underestimate the complexity and cost of what they didn't actually write and believe that there is nothing to improve.
exe34 11mo ago
Are you quite sure that's the only difference you can think of? Let me give you a hint: is there any difference in the volume for the same cost at all?
JoshTriplett 11mo ago
Many of the people who submit 9000-line AI-generated PRs today would, for the most part, not have submitted PRs at all before, or would not have made something that passes CI, or would not have built something that looks sufficiently plausible to make people spend time reviewing it.
- WalterSear 11mo ago
  9000-line PRs were never a good idea, have only been sufficiently plausible because we were forced to accept bad PR review practices. Coding was expensive and management beat us into LGTMing them into the codebase to keep the features churning. Those days are gone. Coding is cheap. The same LLMs that enable people to submit 9000 line PRs of chaos can be used to quickly turn them into more sensible work. If they genuinely can't do a better job, rejecting the PR is still the right response. Just push back.
- HelloNurse 11mo ago
  Most of those people should still keep their ignorance to themselves, without bothering actual programmers, like they did before LLM hype convinced them that "sufficiently plausible" is good enough. A similar trend: the popularity of electric scooters among youngsters who would otherwise walk, use public transport, or use decent vehicles increases accidents in cities.
  - JoshTriplett 11mo ago
    I think my comment may have been misparsed. I was observing that one of the problems with LLMs is making it possible for people to produce 9000-line PRs they don't understand where previously they might have been gated by making something even remotely plausible that compiles or passes CI.

I contend that, by far and away the biggest difference between entirely human-generated slop and AI-assisted stupidity is the irrational reaction that some people have to AI-assisted stuff.

hatefulmoron 11mo ago

Calling things "slop" is just begging the question. The real differentiating factor is that, in the past, "human-generated slop" at least took effort to produce. Perhaps, in the process of producing it, the human notices what's happening and reconsiders (or even better, improves it such that it's no longer "slop".) Claude has no such inhibitions. So, when you look at a big bunch of code that you haven't read yet, are you more or less confident when you find out an LLM wrote it?

WalterSear 11mo ago
I have pretty much the same amount of confidence when I receive AI generated or non-AI generated code to review: my confidence is based on the person guiding the LLM, and their ability to that. Much more so than before, I'll comfortably reject a PR that is hard to follow, for any reason, including size. IMHO, the biggest change that LLMs have brought to the table is that clean code and refactoring are no longer expensive, and should no longer be bargained for, neglected or given the lip service that they have received throughout most of my career. Test suites and documentation, too. (Given the nature of working with LLMs, I also suspect that clean, idiomatic code is more important than ever, since LLMs have presumably been trained on that, but this is just a personal superstition, that is probably increasingly false, but also feels harmless) The only time I think it is appropriate to land a large amount of code at once is if it is a single act of entirely brain dead refactoring, doing nothing new, such as renaming a single variable across an entire codebase, or moving/breaking/consolidating a single module or file. And there better be tests. Otherwise, get an LLM to break things up and make things easier for me to understand, for crying out loud: there are precious few reasons left not to make reviewing PRs as easy as possible. So, I posit that the emotional reaction from certain audiences is still the largest, most exhausting difference.
- grey-area 11mo ago
  clean code and refactoring are no longer expensive Are you contending that LLMs produce clean code?
  - WalterSear 11mo ago
    They do, for many people. Perhaps you need to change your approach.
    - dmurray 11mo ago
      If you can produce a clean design, the LLM can write the code.
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        Unless you're doing something fabulously unique (at which point I'm jealous you get to work on such a thing), they're pretty good at cribbing the design of things if it's something that's been well documented online (canonically, a CRUD SaaS app, with minor UI modification to support your chosen niche).
        WalterSear 11mo ago
        And if you are doing something fabulously unique, the LLM can still write all the code around it, likely help with many of the components, give you at least a first pass at tests, and enable rapid, meaningful refactors after each feature PR.
      - WalterSear 11mo ago
        I think maybe there's another step too - breaking the design up into small enough peices that the LLM can follow it, and you can understand the output.
        TexanFeller 11mo ago
fragmede 11mo ago
If you try and one shot it, sure, but if you question Claude, point out the errors of its ways, tell it to refactor and ultrathink, point out that two things have similar functionality and could be merged. It can write unhinged code with duplicate unused variable definitions that don't work, and it'll fix it up if you call it out, or you can just do it yourself. (cue questions of if, in that case, it would just be faster to do it yourself.)
- hatefulmoron 11mo ago
  I have a Claude max subscription. When I think of bad Claude code, I'm not thinking about unused variable definitions. I'm thinking about the times you turn on ultrathink, allow it to access tools and negotiate it's solution, and it still churns out an over complicated yet partially correct solution that breaks. I totally trust Claude to fix linting errors.
  - WalterSear 11mo ago
    If you are getting garbage out, you are asking it for too much at once. Don't ask for solutions - ask for implementations.
    - hatefulmoron 11mo ago
      Distinction without a difference. I'm talking about its output being insufficient, whatever word you want to use for output.
      - WalterSear 11mo ago
        And I'm arguing that if the output wasn't sufficient, neither was your input. You could also be asking for too much in one go, though that's becoming less and less of a problem as LLMs improve.
        hatefulmoron 11mo ago
        You're proposing a truism: if you don't get a good result, it's either because your query is bad or because the LLM isn't good enough to provide a good result. Yes, that is how this works. I'm talking about the case where you're providing a good query and getting poor results. Claiming that this can be solved by more LLM conversations and ultrathink is cope.
HelloNurse 11mo ago
> Perhaps, in the process of producing it, the human notices what's happening and reconsiders (or even better, improves it such that it's no longer "slop".) Given the same ridiculously large and complex change, if it is handwritten only a seriously insensitive and arrogant crackpot could, knowing what's inside, submit it with any expectation that you accept it without a long and painful process instead of improving it to the best of their ability; on the other hand using LLM assistance even a mildly incompetent but valuable colleague or contributor, someone you care about, might underestimate the complexity and cost of what they didn't actually write and believe that there is nothing to improve.

exe34 11mo ago

Are you quite sure that's the only difference you can think of? Let me give you a hint: is there any difference in the volume for the same cost at all?

JoshTriplett 11mo ago

Many of the people who submit 9000-line AI-generated PRs today would, for the most part, not have submitted PRs at all before, or would not have made something that passes CI, or would not have built something that looks sufficiently plausible to make people spend time reviewing it.

WalterSear 11mo ago
9000-line PRs were never a good idea, have only been sufficiently plausible because we were forced to accept bad PR review practices. Coding was expensive and management beat us into LGTMing them into the codebase to keep the features churning. Those days are gone. Coding is cheap. The same LLMs that enable people to submit 9000 line PRs of chaos can be used to quickly turn them into more sensible work. If they genuinely can't do a better job, rejecting the PR is still the right response. Just push back.
HelloNurse 11mo ago
Most of those people should still keep their ignorance to themselves, without bothering actual programmers, like they did before LLM hype convinced them that "sufficiently plausible" is good enough. A similar trend: the popularity of electric scooters among youngsters who would otherwise walk, use public transport, or use decent vehicles increases accidents in cities.
- JoshTriplett 11mo ago
  I think my comment may have been misparsed. I was observing that one of the problems with LLMs is making it possible for people to produce 9000-line PRs they don't understand where previously they might have been gated by making something even remotely plausible that compiles or passes CI.