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LLMs are pretty bad at compressing ideas down to the level a smart human can. I think this is quite important for good documentation. Essentially the AI wont do a good job of highlighting the really important and essential details unless you go in and edit the writing by hand afterwards using your human intuition. I am not saying to not use LLMs to write docs, but I would definitely edit to expose the really important details as early as possible in the docs and leave the bulk boring stuff the LLM writes for later.

by Terr_32 minutes ago|

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Yeah, I find it... not incomprehensible, but perhaps deeply misguided the way many people are using LLMs mostly to bulk things up.

1. They generate a lot of fluff that people are accustomed to thinking of as a "sign of work" or "sign of intelligence", but now that counterfeits are easy they are not (should not be) valuable anymore.

2. That fluff (and grammatical annoyances) make readers zone out instead of getting what you want them to get from the document.

3. Much of the document is often an extrapolation from a much smaller set of data like source-code or a spreadsheet or the prompt-stuff. If you really believe the tech will get better, then you should be preserving those higher-truth artifacts instead, and use them to generate an improved extrapolation as-needed.

by cbarrick2 hours ago|

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For sure. But I can definitely produce something good enough to get the job done in a much shorter time by bootstrapping myself from an LLM output and editing from there. (I do edit. Raw LLM output is such a drag to read. Too low signal.)

by StilesCrisis2 hours ago|

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I'm the reverse. To me, no one cares if your code has "your voice." But your English writing should reflect your humanity.

by cbarrick2 hours ago|

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I don't care if anyone else cares that my code has my voice. My voice doesn't add value to the code. But what other people think of my code is entirely beside the point that I'm trying to make.

To me, code is a creative endeavor. I know that this isn't a universal feeling, but to me the act of creating is more personally valuable than the creation. So when I read code that I wrote (with the help of a tool) that doesn't sound like me, I feel like I have robbed myself of something that I find personally important.

My employer, or anyone else, doesn't care and probably shouldn't care about my experience during the act of creating. The creation is what matters to the external world.

But like, I don't think I'm alone in valuing my own creativity and finding that creativity in code.

(And please don't misunderstand. I'm definitely not arguing that code produced should be "clever" or "creative" in the other sense of the word. I'm just talking about the experience of creativity.)

by tyre1 hours ago|

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My advice is to keep writing. Writing is thinking. Write the docs, let the LLM turn it into code.

People have started treating writing as a commodity because generating words is commoditized. But thinking has not been. If anything it’s become more valuable because people are turning off their brains.

As an EM, I know that it’s an investment worth making and encourage ICs accordingly.

by qmmmur2 hours ago|

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I am pretty anti-AI, but for once I am reading someone's complete and balanced take on things. Despite it's usefulness on the surface, I do think the lost of human personalities is tragic. Efficiency aside, it's the only thing that makes anything worthwhile.