On: Someone behind the software

[pianopatrick]

You can add values to your AGENTS.md and that will affect how the AI works. For instance you can say stuff like "on this project our top value is that the code front end should be as fast as possible" and you'll get different results than if you say "on this project our top value is that the front end should be as simple as possible"

[willy_k → pianopatrick]

> but a human still needs to edit the output or steer it on a good path that only they can see and which is part of a larger vision.

I don’t see how this is any different. The input comes in a different section of context and potentially before rather than after generation, but that doesn’t change that human taste is needed.

[AlienRobot → pianopatrick]

I wrote in my AGENTS.md "do not use chained ternary operators." I'm still waiting for it to work.

[sfink → AlienRobot]

I've found that telling agents to not do something mostly just gives them a suggestion of a way to do that thing, and the part about not doing it that way gets lost. Well, it's nicely accessible for when it apologizes for doing it.

I now try to only give examples of how I want it to do things, and hooks that complain when they do the bad thing (but still don't mention the bad thing in the complaint.)

[pianopatrick → AlienRobot]

You're better off using linting for something specific like that.

[userbinator → AlienRobot]

I would actually prefer chained ternaries over more verbose if/else expressions with duplicated LHS, so this does go back to the argument about "taste".

[AlienRobot → userbinator]

This is one of the things I like about Rust. You can have both.

    let foo = {
        if bar {
            1
        } else if baz {
            2
        } else {
            3
        }
    };

Unfortunately not all languages are Rust.

[userbinator → AlienRobot]

That isn't more concise than

   foo = bar ? 1
             : baz ? 2
                   : 3;

[AlienRobot → userbinator]

But it's more readable, and that's what matters.

[userbinator → AlienRobot]

I don't think more empty lines and useless whitespace is "more readable" at all. Once again, the "taste" argument comes back.

[nananana9 → userbinator]

What makes it more readable is:

1. Not having two sets of syntax for the same idea, especially when if statements can trivially be extended to an expression.

2. Not adding the concept of an operator pair (? and :) to the grammar of the language, along with parsing rules, just for this one case

3. Not getting the precedence of this ?: operator pair completely wrong.

4. The conditions are at the same indentation level, each condition is preceded by the word "if" - it's obvious what it is when skimming the code.

5. The values too are at the same indentation level, making it obvious they play the same role in the code - rather than your snippet where the condition "baz" is directly under the value 1

[ORDINAND_PIZZA → pianopatrick]

i don’t think they’re the same kind of value. AI wants to solve your problem, it doesn’t care about you (or your users). it doesn’t know what love or loss feels like. you can try to explain that to it all day, it just doesn’t care like a human can. it doesn’t know why, it doesn’t care why.