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2001zhaozhaoyesterday at 11:42 PM4 repliesview on HN

> There are no variable names. @Int.0 is the most recent Int binding; @Int.1 is the one before.

You already lost me here. There's a reason variable names are a thing in programming, and that's to semantically convey meaning. This matters no matter whether a human is writing the code or a LLM.


Replies

kgeisttoday at 2:05 AM

>The short answer is that variable names are one of the things that confuses LLMs rather than helps them. Unlike with humans, names undermine a model's efforts to keep track of state over larger scales. Models confuse similarly named variables in different parts of the codebase easily

So I wonder, doesn't this apply to function names too, which the author keeps in? I've seen LLMs use wrong functions/classes as well.

I think a proper harness, LSP and tests already solve everything Vera is trying to solve. They mostly cite research from 2021 before coding harnesses and agentic loops were a thing, back when they were basically trying to one-shot with relatively weak models (by modern standards)

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onlyrealcuzzotoday at 2:08 AM

> You already lost me here.

Agreed.

I'm working on a language designed for machines to write and humans to understand and review.

It doesn't seem worthwhile to have code nobody can understand.

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foltiktoday at 2:33 AM

So there are variable names, they’re just inscrutable context dependent numbers.

ycombinatornewstoday at 1:05 AM

Same here, reminds of JIRA’s field_17190 in MCP responses instead of description (and in similar excel-like systems)

Good luck managing hallucinations on that context