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Comment by Retr0id | Hacker News Reader

> Violet marks the data as it moves, always top to bottom. Nothing else on the page uses that color.

I'm seeing 3 violet elements on my screen. "ms" in the top left, the dot next to that text, and a dot on a horizontal timeline at the lower edge of the screen. Scrolling down I see yet more violet UI elements, I assume the one on the vertical timeline represents the data, while all the others represent... other things.

It seems violet is just the accent colour used for everything, which makes it an especially perplexing comment. I can only assume the "author" never even read the LLM's output before posting it.

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Yeah this smells like the type of comment an LLM leaves when it gets a really specific instruction. “use one consistent color for the data timeline. Right now we’re using multiple which is confusing.” Then the LLM writes some comment that’s a mini retrospective on what happened to justify itself.

Claude seems to do this all the time. That, the empty words and the increased self initiative of claude were all reasons I decided to just use codex (now merged into GPT).

Claude using documentation and comments as its personal diary is one of the most infuriating behaviors it exhibits.

Half the time it’ll record some temporary implementation quirk, which later sessions interpret as infallible product design requirements. Absolutely unsustainable.

Codex does this too, I've noticed. LLMs seem to love documenting irrelevant implementation details in what should be user-facing text. I guess because the context is overwhelmingly the technical side of things, so without a later directive to steer it, that's what's most likely to come out.

The user-facing string stuff is definitely the thing that drives me the most nuts. I guess it's nice that it defaults to gag-inducingly transparent, but I don't think the backend structure should be written out in the title element of the app.

What' especially annoying is when you as a code reviewer have to go through tons of such comments that keep distracting you because the author could not bother reading those comments and assessing that they contain references to prompts / instructions that are completely irrelevant to he target audience

Absolutely, makes my blood boil. Claude proposes an obviously wrong/overengineered solution to a problem. I come up with a better approach and we agree to do that instead. Every step of the way, Claude leaves code comments with long-winded explanations of how we're doing X instead of doing $insane_thing.

Literally # This method rejects splines that can't be reticulated. This helps us avoid murdering puppies and punching a baby in the face.

Also “the clock at the top is exact” but the clock (on my phone, at least) is at the bottom. Still cool though!

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