this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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369
Show top LLMs buggy code and they'll finish off the mistakes rather than fix them. (www.theregister.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
43 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Researchers have found that large language models (LLMs) tend to parrot buggy code when tasked with completing flawed snippets.

That is to say, when shown a snippet of shoddy code and asked to fill in the blanks, AI models are just as likely to repeat the mistake as to fix it.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago (1 children)

To be fair, if you give me a shit code base and expect me to add features with no time to fix the existing ones, I will also just add more shit on the pile. Because obviously that’s how you want your codebase to look.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

And if you do that without saying you want to refactor, I likely won't stand up for you on the next round of layoffs. If I wanted to make the codebase worse, I'd use AI.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’ve been in this scenario and I didn’t wait for layoffs. I left and applied my skills where shit code is not tolerated, and quality is rewarded.

But in this hypothetical, we got this shit code not by management encouraging the right behavior, and giving time to make it right. They’re going to keep the yes men and fire the “unproductive” ones (and I know fully, adding to the pile is not, in the long run, productive, but what does the management overseeing this mess think?)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Fair.

That said, we have a lot of awful code at my org, yet we also have time to fix it. Most of the crap came from the "move fast and break things" period, but now we have the room to push back a bit.

There's obviously a balance, and as a lead, I'm looking for my devs to push back and make the case for why we need the extra time. If you convince me, I'll back you up and push for it, and we'll probably get the go-ahead. I'm not going to approve everything though because we can't fix everything at once. But if you ignore the problems and trudge along anyway, I'll be disappointed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I bet the people you work with are very happy to have you as a lead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I hope so.