←back to thread

Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

(blog.yossarian.net)
431 points thunderbong | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.21s | source
Show context
davidguetta ◴[] No.42665631[source]
Is it not a problem which is basically COMPLETELY SOLVED by LLMs ?

The reason this happens is because Makefiles (or CI/CD pipelines / linters config, bash scripts) are more or less "complete language" on their own, that are not worth learning when you can do ... exactly what the author says (copy/pasting/modifying until it works) 99% of the time.

But LLMs in general know the language so if you ask "write a minimal Makefile that does this" or even "please simplify the Makefile that i copy/pasted/modified", my experience is that they do that very well actually.

replies(1): >>42666978 #
uludag ◴[] No.42666978[source]
Completely solved? I'd say exacerbated beyond recognition. We have tools to let us get by so much farther without understanding anything, so it probably becomes less of a problem in more cases. But it basically guarantees that all but the most curious will not understand how the system actually works. Everything becomes magical copy/pasting from the most advanced information retrieval system with LLMs.
replies(2): >>42667006 #>>42677494 #
1. cindycindy ◴[] No.42667006[source]
Imagine if copy-pasting LLM output is the valuable part of human participation in software development. The act of copy-past sounds like drudgery, not problem solving. Another user phrased it best:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42646989