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by dmmartins 138 days ago
> What was your thought process using AI? > Share your prompts! Share your process! It helps me understand your rationale.

why? does it matter? do you ask the same questions for people that don't use AI? I don't like using AI for code because I don't like the code it generates and having to go over and over until I like it, but I don't care how people write code. I review the code that's on the PR and if there's I don't understand/agree, I comment on the PR

other than the 1600 lines PR that's hard to view, it feels that the author just want to be in the way and control everything other people are doing
4 comments
OptionOfT 138 days ago
Because when your code is handwritten, it's supposed to be a translation of you parsing business requirements to code.

Using AI adds a non-deterministic layer in between, and a lot of code now is there that you probably didn't need.

The prompt is helpful to figure out what is needed and what isn't.

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lo_zamoyski 138 days ago
The correct thing to do is to annotate the code and the PR with comments. You shouldn't be submitting code you don't understand in the first place. These comments will contain the reasoning in the prompts. Giving me a list of prompts would just be annoying and messy, not informative.

Also, we should not be submitting huge PRs in general. It is difficult to be thorough in such cases. Changes will be less well understood and more bugs will sneak their way into the code base.

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OptionOfT 138 days ago
The AI velocity comes from large PRs that no-one reviews.
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hombre_fatal 138 days ago
The prompt is the ground truth that reveals the assumptions and understandings of the person who generated the code.

It makes a lot more sense to review and workshop that into a better prompt than to refactor the derived code when there are foundational problems with the prompt.

Also, we do do this for human-generated code. It's just a far more tedious process of detective work since you often have to go the opposite direction and derive someone's understanding from the code. Especially for low effort PRs.

Ideally every PR would come with an intro that sells the PR and explains the high level approach. That way you can review the code with someone's objectives in mind, and you know when deviations from the objective are incidental bugs rather than misunderstandings.

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roxolotl 138 days ago
Yes of course you should ask the same thing of other non AI PRs. Figuring out the why and the thought process behind behavior is one of the most important parts of communication especially when you don’t know people as well
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madeofpalk 138 days ago
> why? does it matter? do you ask the same questions for people that don't use AI?

…yes? If someone dumps a PR on me without any rationale I definitely want to understand their thought process about how they landed on this solution!

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dmmartins 138 days ago
why? the code output is the important thing, not how people get to it. you may need help understanding what the code does, or you may question why they didn't do it some other way you think is better, but if the code does what it's supposed to do, doesn't matter if the person dreamed about the solution, copy the answer from a google search or some AI did it.
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