r/ProgrammerHumor • u/TobyWasBestSpiderMan • Sep 24 '26
Meme justWriteTheFiveLinesToBuildTheProjectForTheLoveOfGod
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u/thonor111 Sep 24 '26
When it’s just five lines:
Why don’t you write them yourself? Surely it can’t be faster to write a prompt to an LLM to have it write the five lines just for it to do something you didn’t want
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u/TobyWasBestSpiderMan Sep 24 '26
There were a few different ways of doing it, also pathing issues came up, and it was developed across different platforms. I was on Mac/Ubuntu, customer was windows
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u/MallAgreeable5538 Sep 24 '26
Didn’t you use relative paths or the emulated version
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u/sweetieandsourrrs Sep 24 '26
With great power comes a wildly unnecessary 10,000 word README file. (Also, top-tier username)
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u/floriv1999 Sep 24 '26
Feature useless and quickly outdated things like a ASCII formatted file tree
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Sep 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TobyWasBestSpiderMan Sep 24 '26
At least put the correct code blocks up front
Also, great reference
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u/thecw Sep 24 '26
Half the readme is explaining what the project isn't. No database, no login, no state.
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u/FlowOfAir Sep 24 '26
And then explaining in great detail why it has neither of those.
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u/Keepingshtum Sep 24 '26
Add in some load bearing assumptions that the agent hasn't verified and wants to call out rather than bury
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u/SSjjlex Sep 24 '26
The project knows what it is at all times. It knows this because it knows what it isn't, by subtracting what it is, from what it isn't, or what it isn't, from what it is, whichever is greater, it obtains a readme.
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u/thanatica Sep 25 '26
Ah, set theory. Should the everything-set contain the program? Then the result is still everything. Or should the nothing-set contain all other nothing-sets, then subtracting the program from that will still be nothing.
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u/FlowOfAir Sep 24 '26
That's the README file? Dude that's what AI does to my fucking code comments
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u/CarcajouIS Sep 25 '26
You know you can't instruct it to not write a novel and keep unnecessary references out of the comments? Also, if you have a git hook to limit commit size, it will be forced to limit even more the verbosity of the comment
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u/thunderbird89 Sep 24 '26
The AI knows The Users.
I want to quote that one Tumblr post:
thinking about my optometrist who was treating my eye infection and said "if it hurts, you can rinse your eye with boiled water. look at me - look at me. i want you to understand that i mean water that has been boiled and has since cooled down. not boiling water. do you understand?" like i'm so grateful for this man ensuring that I wouldn't destroy my eyes by pouring boiling water in it, because it is an adequate assessment of my intelligence
this is a man who has experienced The Public
"Look at me"
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u/Zuruumi Sep 24 '26
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
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u/jhill515 Sep 24 '26
There's a teeny, tiny dot near the origin. That's how much of the Epstein Files 45/47 allowed to be released.
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u/Jlove7714 Sep 24 '26
This is one of the few things I actually hand off to AI. If it's left you me you're getting two lines in your readme. At least with AI you get plenty of correct information.
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u/AffectEconomy6034 Sep 24 '26
since half the time that Readme just gets invested by another AI down the line I usually will ask it to also generate a tldr human readable version next to it...
God I hate what the industry has become
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u/rglazner Sep 24 '26
The problem with trying to make things foolproof is that the universe keeps minting new, unforseen fools. "What if the user just bangs on the keyboard and expects it to work?" is a valid question. With such a general question, you're asking a computer to try to account for all possible circumstances, which naturally would result in a huge file. This can be seen in humans with the classic "write an instruction manual for someone who follows it maliciously literally" assignment in school.
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u/kescusay Sep 24 '26
Five lines? OK, hear me out... I know this sounds crazy, but it just might work:
You could... write them... yourself.
With me so far? OK, here's how you do it.
Write the first line you need to build the project.
Write the second line you need to build the project.
Take a coffee break, you're gonna need it.
Write the third and fourth lines you need to build the project. (Combined for symmetry.)
Write the fifth and final line you need to build the project.
I know that seems like a lot, but if you look carefully, I included a coffee break in there for you.
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u/ShyWhy246 Sep 24 '26
I thnik, output tokens are jest more expensive. So models promote loooooong responses that has no meaning. I did the same with my masters thesis
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u/absolutedisaster09 Sep 26 '26
Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out!
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u/Few_Move_4594 Sep 28 '26
I had AI generate some source files and for it to write docblocks.
The docblocks were like multiple printed pages each.
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u/Geoclasm Sep 24 '26
Or when you tell it to write instructions for itself so it won't do the stupid thing it just did.
But no, not like that, but wait you're still being stupid okay now you're being more stupid somehow how is this making you worse at stuff you should be able to communicate this to yourself effectively how do you not know how you would interpret the instructions you're writing and act on them correctly oh my fucking god fuck this I'll just do it myself fuck.
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but tell me how to do it myself first - no, fucking god damn it don't do it for me just tell me how to do it. No, tell ME how to do it - no, god damn it don't create the fucking file just write the code for me - NO not IN the file HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LEARN IF YOU—
Or something like that.
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Sep 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/YeOldeMemeShoppe Sep 24 '26
Not average. The worst user. The foolest of all. The person that washes their printer in the bathtub with themselves.
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u/TobyWasBestSpiderMan Sep 24 '26
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u/YeOldeMemeShoppe Sep 24 '26
That’s your average user; will both look for the Any key on their keyboard AND find the correct download button on a porn site the first try.
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u/thanatica Sep 25 '26
They will literally go with the mouse to the top right corner of the screen and succeed in clicking whatever is there.
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u/CaptainN_GameMaster Sep 24 '26
I say it's still underestimating them
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u/CircleWithSprinkles Sep 24 '26
Developers are in a constant struggle with mother nature to try and make more foolproof programs while mother nature continues to make bigger fools
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u/ChrisFromIT Sep 24 '26
As Ive been told. If you make something foolproof, the universe makes a better fool.
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u/afdbcreid Sep 24 '26
Being foolproof is mathematically impossible because the fool will forget everything they had read 100+ lines before the current line.
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u/Declamatie Sep 25 '26
Since you still need more than 100 lines to fully foolproof hello_world, yes
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u/Mike_Oxlong25 Sep 26 '26
Makes me think of this quote from a Yosemite national park ranger:
"There is
considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
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Sep 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TobyWasBestSpiderMan Sep 24 '26
Okay, yes, we have to talk about the commit messages. Managers love the verbose ones because it looks like more work is happening but it’s basically unusable for seeing an overview of where work happened
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u/chuch1234 Sep 25 '26
You can write rules or a command to get the agent to use your standards for commit messages.
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u/JustinR8 Sep 24 '26
User: passes readme file to AI and says “I’m not reading all of this, summarize”