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Comment by IshKebab

12 hours ago

Definitely LLM. No humans write that many comments.

Ahem...

My code usually clocs at 50/50 (or thereabouts)[0]. Has, since my very first real engineering project (in 1987)[1]. I discuss in detail, here[2].

But one reason that I like LLMs, is that they help me to write even more documentation. I have found that I can instruct an LLM to revise my documentation, and make it even more effective.

[0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY (My GH profile. Pretty much everything there, is like that -has, since long before LLMs were a broken rubber on the drug store shelf).

[1] https://littlegreenviper.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TF30... (Downloads a PDF)

[2] https://littlegreenviper.com/leaving-a-legacy/

  • Your code isn't as unnecessarily commented as this. E.g. look at this line

    https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_Spinner/blob/d44ee...

    An LLM would have commented `// Create temporary UI view.`

    Completely redundant comments like this are a classic hallmark of LLMs:

      # Set frequency scaling factor
      freq=0.2
    

    Dunno why I have been downvoted for stating the obvious.

    Also from my brief look at one file it looks like you have 50% comments because you have a gazillion comment separator lines.

    • I didn't downvote. There's nothing wrong with your comment. It's just a bit silly, because humans definitely write that much. I learned from Apple and Adobe headerdocs.

      I worked for a Japanese company that accreted comments.

      Yeah, lots of whitespace.

Human could write that many comments to get enough base64 text for a design. Maybe to even get some of the highlighted characters in places they want (roughly equally spaced apart).

> No humans write that many comments.

Especially in a case like this, I would definitely write a lot of comments to aid in understanding, thus increasing trust so people would try it out and tinker with it.

Honestly it's a bit of a shame. I checked and they could've shortened their base64 payload by 304 chars by removing all comments except the top two congratulatory ones, or by 524 if they removed those too.

  • Would they still get the highlighted "PEACE FOR ALL" text throughout the shortened string? It looks like the length, and presence of those characters, was an explicit design choice.

  • Maybe they added the comments to get a longer payload for the sake of the shirt's design.

    The comments can be more cute/awe inspiring for people who aren't as familiar with bash but like solving puzzles as well.

  • im just sad it didnt render a qr code leading to malware :'). the different ways ppl look at obfuscated codes and scripts hah