This would sound insane to me from two years ago but I have recently started insisting on writing all my own commit messages and pull request descriptions. I do usually have an agent review them for factual accuracy, but not rephrase them.
It slows things down a bit, but in the best possible way. It has helped immensely to improve the depth of my understanding of the agent-generated code. When agents are doing everything its way too easy to “skim” diffs and not really absorb them.
I always prided myself on my technical writing, and commit messages and PRs were a great place to hone that skill. I found that I missed it and my work is better now I’ve reclaimed that part of my old job back.
A big win of LLMs in my book is the absolute reduction of commit messages with just “fixes” or “updates”. Commit messages have become more meaningful and useful, even if far from perfect.
We have one dev who uses LLMs to write the code, but still commits by hand. Most of his messages are of the type above, and none of them are useful.
You've gotta be joking. Every AI commit message, summary, and test plan is full of extraneous garbage I didn't need to read (and a lot of it is not understandable)
Fix your harness. Provide rules, format, and good examples.
You probably had those for the humans in your team for when new hurts join, right? Just direct your LLMs to them and you’ll have a much better experience.
Just like you can’t expect a new junior dev to know what to do without direction, the same applies with LLMs.
semiquaver · · focus · HN ↗
It slows things down a bit, but in the best possible way. It has helped immensely to improve the depth of my understanding of the agent-generated code. When agents are doing everything its way too easy to “skim” diffs and not really absorb them.
I always prided myself on my technical writing, and commit messages and PRs were a great place to hone that skill. I found that I missed it and my work is better now I’ve reclaimed that part of my old job back.
LeafItAlone · · focus · HN ↗
We have one dev who uses LLMs to write the code, but still commits by hand. Most of his messages are of the type above, and none of them are useful.
aprilthird2021 · · focus · HN ↗
LeafItAlone · · focus · HN ↗
You probably had those for the humans in your team for when new hurts join, right? Just direct your LLMs to them and you’ll have a much better experience.
Just like you can’t expect a new junior dev to know what to do without direction, the same applies with LLMs.
skydhash · · focus · HN ↗