Comment by 9rx
16 days ago
> more accessible and better docs
Easy now. You might be skilled in documentation, but most developers write docs like they write code. For the most part all you are only going to get the program written twice, once in natural language and once in a programming language. In which case, you could have simply read the code in the first place (or had an LLM explain the code in natural language, if you can't read code for some reason).
> you are going to get the program written twice, once in natural language and once in a programming language.
How is this a bad thing? Personally, I'm not superhuman and more readily understand natural language.
If I have the choice between documentation explaining what a function does and reading the code, I'm going to just read the docs every time. Unless I have reason to think something is screwy or having an intricate understanding is critical to my job.
If you get paid by the hour then go for it, but I don't have time to go line by line through library code.
> How is this a bad thing?
It is not good or bad. I don't understand your question.
> If I have the choice between documentation explaining what a function does and reading the code, I'm going to just read the docs every time.
The apparent "choice", given the context under which the discussion is taking place, is writing your program in natural language and have an LLM transcribe it to a programming language, or writing your program in a programming language and having an LLM transcribe it to natural language.
Ah, my apologies then. I misread the post as an argument against generated documentation.