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points by rmunn 2 days ago | 0 comments
Nobody else is likely to see this comment but I want to make it anyway. Yes, simple is hard. Thank you for articulating it so well.

And yes, that's also why LLM code is usually (unless driven by someone who really knows what he's doing) full of unnecessary complexity. Because although LLMs can get a much broader "understanding" of a code base than I would have given them credit for a couple years ago, their "understanding" is still shallow. And what you need to truly be able to achieve that hard simplicity (I heard someone refer to it once as "the simplicity on the other side of complexity", e.g. when Kepler figured out that orbits were ellipses, not circles, and that allowed getting rid of epicycles) is deep understanding. Which LLMs are not capable of, hence why their code is full of the kind of needless complexity that one produces when one has only a shallow understanding of the code. (E.g., you in that enterprisey codebase when you weren't going to be given time to reach deep understanding).

[–] eithed 2 days ago
I don't think I agree that simple is hard. Simple takes effort. Simple requires that you have agency. Simple has all the information available. Simple means that you're accountable for something. I'll be cynical here - it's sooooo much easier to say: this is how it was when I arrived here, it's not my problem, what will I get out of this, somebody told me to do it like this, let's leave as it is, there's no point in touching this. And nothing in the above is LLMs fault! Well, unless at least now you can say - something did it like that! It's not my fault, it's what LLM told me to do.

I'm hopeful that LLMs make iteration and refactoring easier. That they'll allow developers to say to product (or even to themselves) "this module that is a dumpster fire? Sure, I can let agent investigate/refactor and that work that would have taken 2w will be done in half a day, do you want to go ahead?". That they'll allow developers to investigate how to make things simpler, more understandable, more coherent, to agree on a one fucking way to do things.

Anyhow, apologies for being glum and straying away from the topic, but I also wanted to make a comment that is unlikely to be seen :) the bile comes from past personal experience and is not directed towards anyone (it's more of an acid reflux).

[–] rmunn 2 days ago
When you say "simple takes effort", that's kind of what I meant by "simple is hard". It takes work, it takes looking at the problem for a long time (Kepler studied orbits for years) until you understand it well enough to have the epiphany that lets you reduce the complexity down to "oh wait, orbits are ellipses and that solves everything!". Since you preceded your statement that "simple takes effort" with a disagreement about simple being hard, I wonder what you thought I meant by "simple is hard".