it's been very helpful to use LLMs to run a parallel effort that helps me understand just why the hell somebody wrote a self-altering stored procedure
cmehdy on Hacker News
In the thread “Ask HN: How do you use AI for software engineering?”, replying to this comment
Helped: Understanding complex legacy code and offering replacement solutions.
Got in the way: Re-printing long messages for singular changes and unreliable subtle edits.
… Needless to say it's a daunting task to try and understand everything, even more so when you discover it all as it breaks down and prevents 500 employees from using a functionality you didn't even know existed. While I can survive and navigate just fine the situation, it's been very helpful to use LLMs to run a parallel effort that helps me understand just why the hell somebody wrote a self-altering stored procedure in a 800GB MsSQL DB which fails due to poor design and high recursion. Sometimes it is just about fixing some syntax, but often enough it is about managing expectations and offering replacement solutions which create less technical debt - with minimal interruption to the entire company's workflow. …