alt Hacker NewsAgreed with Reading! This alone isn't enough though. PreLLM too it wasn't just reading code to review. Someone did the hard work or crafting the code and each unit test would tell you the weird corner cases to deal with and factor that into changing your code. One person owned a part of the codebase and was an expert. Not to mention reading isnt easy when the velocity of code pumping in is 3-5x more. Its exhausting and reading becomes skimming.
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euthymiclabs • yesterday at 10:34 PM
So true. Writing the code was so helpful for learning what it meant. It takes much more investment to go back to the code LLMs write to figure out what's actually happening and weigh everything.
The expert is now outsourced to LLM. If someone asks me about a bug in a system I made N years ago, I usually have a hunch what the problem might be, now it feels I'm lost in my own codebase (even if I really read the code). Similar to why math books have exercises and not only explanations.
Guess it's not an issue as long as you have access to the models and someone who likes prompting.