only-one1701 2 days ago

I like writing code more than reading it, personally.

  • simonw 2 days ago

    Yeah, I think that's pretty common. It took me 15+ years of my own career before I got over my aversion to spending significant amounts of time reading through code that I didn't write myself.

  • pdimitar a day ago

    We all do. But more often than not we have to learn to do surgical incisions in order to do our task for the day. It's what truly distinguishes a professional.

williamstein 2 days ago

Totally. And yet rigorous proof is very difficult. Having done some mathematics involving nontrivial proofs, I respect even more how difficult rigor is.

  • pdimitar a day ago

    Ah, I absolutely don't verify code in the mathematical sense of the word. More like utilize strong static typing (or hints / linters in weaker typed languages) and write a lot of tests.

    Nothing is truly 100% safe or free of bugs. What I meant with my comment up-thread was that I have enough experience to have a fairly quick and critical eye of code, and that has saved my skin many times.

th0ma5 a day ago

You have an automation bias. "Surely this thing knows more than me it must be right." and there is no reason to believe that, but you will.

  • simonw a day ago

    How did you get there from me agreeing 100% with someone who said that you should be ready to verify everything an LLM does for you and if you're not willing to do that you shouldn't use them at all?

    Do you ever read my comments, or do you just imagine what I might have said and reply to that?

    • th0ma5 10 hours ago

      There's simply no way to verify everything that comes out of these things. Otherwise why use it? You also can't possibly truly know if you know more about a topic since by definition the models know more than you. This is automation bias. Do you not know the problems with even verifying or watching machines? This is a core part of the discussion of self driving vehicles. I guess I assumed you knew stuff about the field of AI!

      • simonw 8 hours ago

        "You also can't possibly truly know if you know more about a topic since by definition the models know more than you"

        Where does that idea that "by definition the models know more than you" come from?