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Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era by amelius on Sunday March 08, 2026 @05:46PM (#47301868)
Also:

"Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

-- Linus Torvalds

Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era by Swizec on Sunday March 08, 2026 @06:32PM (#47302316)
> "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

If you get the architecture wrong, everyone complains. If you get it right, nobody notices it's there.

Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era by esafak on Sunday March 08, 2026 @06:38PM (#47302375)
The SRE's Lament.
Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era by Terr_ on Sunday March 08, 2026 @07:19PM (#47302698)
"Nothing needs fixing, so what do we pay you for?"

"Everything's broken! What do we even pay you for!?"

Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era by k32k on Sunday March 08, 2026 @09:49PM (#47303913)
Doesnt this apply with the hysteria of LLMs?

The question being - are LLMs 'good' at interpreting and making choices/decisions about data structures and relationships?

I do not write code for a living but I studied comp sci. My impression was always that the good software engineers did not worry about the code, not nearly as much as the data structures and so on.

Re:We should revisit literate programming in the agent era by skydhash on Sunday March 08, 2026 @11:00PM (#47304393)
The only use of code is to process data, aka information. And any knowledge worker that the success of processing information is mostly relying on how it's organized (try operating a library without an index).

Most of the time is spent about researching what data is available and learning what data should be returned after the processing. Then you spend a bit of brain power to connect the two. The code is always trivial. I don't remember ever discussing code in the workplace since I started my career. It was always about plans (hypotheses), information (data inquiry), and specifications (especially when collaborating).

If the code is worrying you, it would be better to buy a book on whatever technology you're using and refresh your knowledge. I keep bookmarks in my web browser and have a few books on my shelf that I occasionally page through.