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Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

(blog.yossarian.net)
431 points thunderbong | 2 comments | 11 Jan 25 04:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.543s | source
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rednafi ◴[11 Jan 25 16:38 UTC] No.42666976[source]▶
This also happens with tools you have to use but don’t get much payoff from—like internal tooling. At work, we have a shitty in-house feature flag service. It breaks all the time and is super finicky. Learning it properly doesn’t really help me, so I mostly copy and paste my way through it.

Another example is jq. I use it occasionally, and ChatGPT handles the syntax pretty well. For me, learning it properly just isn’t worth the time or effort.

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1. linuxftw ◴[11 Jan 25 16:52 UTC] No.42667099[source]▶
Makefile syntax is also well understood by ChatGPT. If you want to know a suitable way for doing some task, ChatGPT can do it. It can also explain what another Makefile is doing.

Here's an example of a (similar) prompt I used recently: "Write me a makefile that executes a script inside a docker container. I want the script to be someprefix-<target-script> that calls /app/<target-script>.sh inside the container."

I don't have to care about Makefile syntax anymore for the most part.

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2. rednafi ◴[11 Jan 25 16:55 UTC] No.42667132[source]▶
Exactly. I used to go for Just and Go Task as Make alternatives, but not anymore. LLMs are great with Make syntax, and Make is everywhere.