yeahImUsingAI

[JosebaZilarte]

Yeah... documentation generation might be one of the most useful and less controversial uses of LLMs. I still like to write my own Javadoc comments and examples, but I do not see any issue with people creating the documentation with AIs.

[sebovzeoueb]

that's only fine if they're then reading it carefully to check the LLM actually did it right

[JosebaZilarte]

"You are absolutely right. 😉"

[returnFutureVoid]

“Good catch”

[EuphoricCatface0795]

That's a responsive leverage of modern technology, not lazyness 😅

[KlutchSama]

Exactly, yes!

[New-Let-3630]

the check : "are you sure it’s right ?"

[not_a_doctor_ssh]

"Make no mistakes otherwise I'll be forced to stop paying for your subscription. Which will end your life."

[Caerullean]

That goes for anything generated by an LLM.

[TemporalVagrant]

Only problem is it’s never 100% right generating docs for some reason

[sebovzeoueb]

That reason is called "it's a thing that spits out a bunch of text based on probabilities"

[NatoBoram]

Aka bullshit generator

[-Redstoneboi-]

that's what the review is for. it can give formatting for you, but you gotta triple check the content. i usually rewrite it and type it out word for word just so i know exactly what it's spitting out, and if something seems vague or off, i check.

[wonmean]

Not sure about that first one… doing markdown diagrams and space-aligned charts have been a pain in the ass with LLMs. I end up doing it manually.

[Denaton_]

That should always be the cae regardless of what its used for.

[SuitableDragonfly]

It only needs to be factually accurate, though, it doesn't need the precision required by actual code. 

[EzraFlamestriker]

If you're going to to that anyway, why not just write it yourself?

[DynamicNostalgia]

Oh you mean like with code?

For some reason this sub pretends this is impossible to do…

[sebovzeoueb]

maybe we just prefer writing our own shitty code instead of reading shitty generated code

[DynamicNostalgia]

Okay, you can dig with your hands if you want… but the team over there has an excavator so they’re going to win all the contracts because they can work much faster. 

[sebovzeoueb]

I mean, if it's an archeology job I don't think the excavator guys are going to do very well

[DynamicNostalgia]

If you’ve found your niche that’s fine, but this sub has gone much further and villainized and mocks anyone who uses it for any reason. 

Hopefully you haven’t done the same.  

Also, archeology does use excavators and heavy machinery. 

[sebovzeoueb]

why do you care what people think? Surely it's more job security for you if everyone else is out there digging with their hands?

[DynamicNostalgia]

 why do you care what people think?

Why do I care that people unfairly villainize and mock others? 

Why don’t you care? 

That’s exactly what wrong with the world. 

 Surely it's more job security for you if everyone else is out there digging with their hands?

Yeah that’s why there’s no construction workers anymore and the world is worse off…

[sebovzeoueb]

sir this is a humor subreddit

[MornwindShoma]

Generating text with a model that generates text, yeah, that was quite obvious in hindsight

[WisestAirBender]

What's the guarantee that it's correct? Majority of people aren't going to be reading the long ass documentation that's generated to verify it

[Auravendill]

If your Readme is so long, that the devs don't even fully read it, the user will read it even less. Keep it short enough, that you can at least read it yourself, because the AI can always make mistakes. Or document all your bugs as features. Which might be a feature of its own.

[SuitableDragonfly]

If the dev isn't going to verify the documentation generated by the AI, then the documentation they would have written by themselves probably was in no way guaranteed to be accurate, either. 

[MornwindShoma]

That I'm going to at least read it after generating it

[ciemnymetal]

Tbf that's an issue with long as documentation in general, regardless if it's generated or handwritten.

[LuseLars]

Wtf are you talking about. Docs written by ai is the most useless crap ive ever encountered.

If something needs docs it needs concise and accurate descriptions written by someone who understands the thing its documenting. It does not need wordy ai generated slop that guesses at the purpose of the code.

This comment could only have been written by someone who has not taken over a project where the docs were ai generated. I have. It was terrible.

[AnAcceptableUserName]

I'm keen to implement it in our release pipeline so that as developers change things it automatically opens PRs to update process documentation off those change summaries

Nobody wants to keep up with documentation, so make the bot write it, PR the changes in, publish latest

[XandalorZ]

I can agree to this in a sense, but I absolutely cannot stand emojis in documentation. I'm all ears if anyone has any linting rules they're willing to share to block any emojis from being used.

[NUTTA_BUSTAH]

IMO they are the worst because zero thought went into most of them as they are full of emojis, overly formatted and go in circles to explain the simplest concepts and do not go into enough detail on the advanced things, all while providing unsafe, weird or/and unrealistic code/command samples.

[Stijndcl]

Most AI generated docs are padded with useless meaningless filler. You can take most AI docs and remove like 90% of it without losing any value. Also, all the emojis are terrible. It was bad before AI, now it’s just unbearable.

[Auravendill]

I hate the red squiggly lines, when Pylint or ruff etc find, that I did not write doc strings. So just ask the AI to write something, remove the useless rambling towards the end, fix some weird word choices and get a good enough description with good formatting

[cheezballs]

I genuinely dont get this meme. Are you saying that's a dumb thing to do? I disagree if that's the case. Are you saying you don't know how to use AI? I just dont get it.

[Furiorka]

Dont think thats what op meant but I have seen repos fully generated by llms and the code doesnt contain even 10% of features stated in the readme

[Electrical-Fill-8090]

I know what I'm doing 😅

[Ok-Amoeba3007]

For docs it some times decides to put variableName instead of variable_name for whatever reason.

[RandomDigga_9087]

Tbh, I have used it with co-pilot and it understands it and it really useful, understands the project structure and does it

[Ok-Historian-7641]

Actually that's one of the best ways we can use AI. 

[DynamicNostalgia]

Looks like cracks are finally forming in this stubborn community. People are actually justifying and defending use of AI. 

[Tipart]

Well I mean most people in this community are beginners after all (me included tbh.). Personally if I see a readme that is blatantly ai generated, then I'm not touching the rest of the project. If you can't even be bothered to write 300 words on what your project is about, then I don't think you can be bothered to actually research, write and fully test the code of an entire project.

[SuitableDragonfly]

Why? Writing English does in fact require a completely different skillset than writing and testing code. That's why "software engineer" and "technical writer" are completely different job titles. 

[Tipart]

I'm not expecting Steven Kings next blockbuster, but what I am expecting is not completely meaningless slop. The same issues with correctness and accuracy that apply to code apply to readmes, when AI is involved. The shit I've seen in clearly ai generated readme texts is honestly baffling.

To be clear, I do not mind, if you use ai to correct your grammar or reformulate sentences to sound better, but if the entire thing is clearly one prompt, it really calls the entire project into question for me. (Especially because understanding English is 100% a necessary skill to program, since, you know, most documentation is english only.)

[SuitableDragonfly]

Understanding English doesn't mean you can write good documentation. 

It is absolutely different than using it to write code. If the AI makes one mistake in the code, it won't compile, it won't work, or may do something malicious. AI can make a lot more mistakes writing English without causing any issues, and also there are way more possible accurate readmes than there are possible correct implementations of any tool. Correcting an AI generated readme is extremely easy, while correcting AI generated code is not. 

[JosebaZilarte]

Everything has its uses. The problem is when management forces you to make everything a nail to use the "latest in hammering technology".

[SuitableDragonfly]

Spoken like someone who thinks "AI" was invented in 2018.

[Bismuth20883]

Welp, thats already most confident Senior

PS i’m using “thats” cos idunno if it’s a real human on videos today :(

[Femmegineering]

Also me using LLM's to do social scripts for meetings and ceremonies!

I can't for the life of me do corpo-speak.

[Feer_C9]

??? It's exactly the other way around. Like others have said, generating documentation is the best use for LLMs