• 14 Posts
  • 73 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 16th, 2023

help-circle
  • I find getting the LLM to either generate or rephrase documentation gives a distinctly worse result than doing it myself. I was in a hurry to document a new API from scratch recently and thought I’d try Copilot, but the results were overly verbose and sometimes inaccurate so I ended up rewriting all of it.

    The LLM is best for boilerplate code that is easily predictable and verifiable. Beyond that it’s sometimes good for initial suggestions if you don’t know where to start with a tool, after which you can go to the actual documentation. But you’ll need to do that, because half the time the suggestions use nonexistent APIs and methods.

    I have always thought that writing code is the easy part of being a developer. The hard parts are the parts management doesn’t appreciate: clarifying requirements, architecting new systems, translating business goals into something codable, letting egotistical know they’re not making sense without offending them, designing effective testing processes, persuading management to prioritize reducing technical debt, and integrating and maintaining existing systems. Maintenance is a huge part of the job that no one gives you credit for. Oh, and if you ever touch the front end, CSS.














  • For personal use? I never do anything that would qualify as “auditing” the code. I might glance at it, but mostly out of curiosity. If I’m contributing then I’ll get to know the code as much as is needed for the thing I’m contributing, but still far from a proper audit. I think the idea that the open-source community is keeping a close eye on each other’s code is a bit of a myth. No one has the time, unless someone has the money to pay for an audit.

    I don’t know whether corporations audit the open-source code they use, but in my experience it would be pretty hard to convince the typical executive that this is something worth investing in, like cybersecurity in general. They’d rather wait until disaster strikes then pay more.



  • The family was presented with a document informing Armstrong that she had been suspended after the school got access to the privately shared message. The school alleges that Armstrong’s post was a “disparaging remark reflecting people at Tennessee Christian.” Referring to the message, the suspension document states, “The comment reflected on the institution, faculty, staff, alumni, and students in the most negative possible way.”

    Not to reflect on them in a negative way, but it kinda sounds like they’re a bunch of bible-bashing assholes.