alt Hacker NewsTo be fair, I would not expect a model to output perfectly formatted C++. I’d let it output whatever it wants and then run it through clang-format, similar to a human. Even the best humans that have the formatting rules in their head will miss a few things here or there.
If there are 40 years of undocumented business quirks, document them and then re-evaluate. A human new to the codebase would fail under the same conditions.
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raw_anon_1111 • yesterday at 6:49 PM
With C++ formatting is optional. A better test case for LLMs is Python where indention specifies code blocks. Even ChatGPT 3.5 got the formatting for Python and YAML correct - now the actual code back then was often hilariously wrong.
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Formatting isn't just visual, in pre-79 COBOL or Fortran. It's syntax. Its a compile failure, or worse, it cuts the line and can sometimes successfully compile into something else.
Thats not just an undocumented quirk, but a fundamental part of being a punch-card ready language.