logoalt Hacker News

groby_b06/16/20250 repliesview on HN

> Plus you shouldn't need an LLM to understand a codebase. Just make it more understandable!

<laughs in legacy code>

And fundamentally, that isn't a function of "capital". All code bases are shaped by the implicit assumptions of their writers. If there's a fundamental mismatch or gap between reader and writer assumptions, it won't be readable.

LLMs are a way to make (some of) these implict assumptions more legible. They're not a panacea, but the idea of "just make it more understandable" is not viable. It's on par with "you don't need debuggers, just don't write bugs"