alt Hacker NewsI recently built a very large test bench for System Verilog.
I ran a bunch of different compilers on it, including some open source ones.
Some of them failed some tests, and it was natural to have my LLM (Claude Fable 5) root-cause the issues, and to double-check my test bench wasn't to blame.
But now I stood with all these patches that I couldn't just throw at the upstream maintainers all at once. I ended up just filing a few issues and moved on to other things.
It felt weird to just file issues when my LLM had already spent a lot of time root-causing and fixing the issues. But then, maybe they could just have their LLMs do the same.
Still not sure if it was the right call?
Replies
This is a real problem.
I suspect that part of it is that people don’t have enough time to mentally incorporate the fix.
Is it weird to submit the MR later, after people have had a chance to digest the issues?
> I ended up just filing a few issues and moved on to other things.
This is the most valuable contribution you had time for, hopefully with a minimum-viable bug reproduction.
Drive-by patches/PRs are usually a net-negative because the maintainer has to reverse-engineer the intent from GenAI code, and then make changes to have it fit in with the rest of project.
> It felt weird to just file issues when my LLM had already spent a lot of time root-causing and fixing the issues
There are countless ways to fix any issue, and only a few right ways (subjectively). The maintainers' role is to decide which ways are right for their project. You shouldn't worry too much about "wasting" code you already generated, GenAI made that step very cheap, but did little for taste and roadmapping.