alt Hacker NewsThe thing is: people quickly discover that even mediocre LLM-code with a mediocre LLM-review, is still better quality than what they hand wrote and hand-reviewed.
So it's already an improvement. Should it be manually read, comprehended, reviewed? Probably. But they can get to an improvement over what they did 2 years ago, with basically no effort. And then they can get a little bit further, with massive effort?
The "LLM-yolo" is a big knee in the cost/benefit curve. It's an improvement over their "old code". The only drawback is: it's still containing bugs, and now no one understands them. But that's not hitting them until that code has aged somewhat, so a year or two down the line.
Replies
> The thing is: people quickly discover that even mediocre LLM-code with a mediocre LLM-review, is still better quality than what they hand wrote and hand-reviewed.
If mediocre code is better quality than what you wrote by hand, you've quickly discovered that you're incompetent.
The problem with hand review I always had was trying to teach the other person. You don't want to present them with an avalanche of problems. So you pick the most important 5. Over time this iterates and you build someone good at what they do.
The good part of LLMs is you don't have to worry about overloading them: you can just outline every problem with the code they produce.
The bad part of LLMs is they don't really "get better" at this stuff. I'm not training a human, and there's a limited amount LLMs can learn. So the training phase never really ends - it's Eternal September.
There's also the problem of this ultimately being my code. It isn't Claude's - Claude isn't a person.
I still read the code. I use LLMs to review it. But I also review it myself. Ultimately its faster than before, and probably better quality (because I can just give all the problems to the LLM), but slower than people doing zero review.
> The thing is: people quickly discover that even mediocre LLM-code with a mediocre LLM-review, is still better quality than what they hand wrote and hand-reviewed.
Not my experience at all. Mediocre LLM-code, mediocrely reviewed is a loaded footgun aimed at both your feet.
Ai separates the wheat from the chaff
> The thing is: people quickly discover that even mediocre LLM-code with a mediocre LLM-review, is still better quality than what they hand wrote and hand-reviewed.
Emphasis mine.
I can't phantom some that bad at coding. Using such exaggeration void your comment.