Hacker News Reader

Comment by cruffle_duffle | Hacker News Reader

"Plus rigorously ensuring backwards compatibility for a project that is 2 hours old and has zero users."

That is exactly how the slop accretes and you get a pile of crap. Claude somehow assumes that said 2 hour old userless app is some dusty enterprise app with millions of users and billions of dollars at stake for a 1 second outage.

I have to constantly have these things "take a deep breath, step back and look at the entire thing and do this change holistically. please restate what i'm asking you to do and why it's important"

View on HN

Which, again, if you attempt to use these LLMs in an actual enterprise project with the assorted legacy mess in it, that does have to have backwards compatiblity, and interacts with 'weird' tech (well, weird to full stack Node/React devs), well it's an exercise in frustration.

Which makes sense.

In a conversation about code, the most likely answer is often some comment about backwards compatibility.

In a conversation about a legacy enterprise app, the most likely answer is often going completely insane

> please restate what i'm asking you to do and why it's important"

This doesn't actually do anything though, right? There's no understanding, so the machine will just reiterate the original token query back to you. The 'why it's important' part will just generate some patronizing boilerplate as a raison d'etre.

The purpose of a prompt like that is to have it rephrase it in its own words, so you can spot any misunderstandings and correct them.

If you're of the belief that this is a contradiction in terms, then what can I say? It works.

But it doesn't "understand" these words any better. When transforming into code it may reinterpret yet again.

If it can rephrase once it's less likely to screw up the second rephrasing into code. Whether or not we want to use the term "understand".

If by "understand" you mean to put the hidden state of the transformer into the desired topological basins. Yes, it does "understand" them better.

For one thing, it helps clarify my own thinking and uncover any gaps. For two, it lets me peek into its own understanding of the problem and ensure we are both aligned. For three, the garbage I spew at it is usually hastily typed crap from a mobile phone. So it helps clean it up and unpacks things.

It’s one one the main ways I know what’s cooking under the hood.

Ps: I used to have to say “in your own words” to make it work right but now days that isn’t required. Other times I’ll add “make sure to ground yourself before doing so” or something to encourage it to load the right shit into its context be it web, files, service calls, whatever. I’ll also some times add “why it’s important (or isn’t, push back if I’m talking nonsense)”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com