- Author
- antirez
- Published
- Undated (the page says 119 days ago)
- Kind
- Personal blog post, opinion with examples from the author's projects
- Original
- antirez.com/news/169
- Subject
- Coding with agents
What it is
antirez wrote this after saying on X that reading code costs programmers impact. The author explains why, and where the advice does not apply. The post also gives a view on what young programmers should learn.
What it says
- antirez says that if a programmer controls the ideas, reading the code is often pointless.
- Three reasons: review volume, LLMs write good local code, and time better spent.
- With DwarfStar, automation did most of the work, yet design understanding was still needed.
- antirez found other local inference code with subtle errors, sometimes more than the automated one.
- antirez still reviews Redis code but calls it mostly pointless and done for users.
- Instead, antirez would use LLMs to write a DESIGN.md describing each data structure's ideas.
- antirez doubts the advice fits young programmers, who might build small interpreters or databases.
What evidence it gives
The post offers argument and the author's experience on DwarfStar and Redis. It claims other inference implementations had subtle errors. It shows no data, code or list of the errors. The claim about newer models reviewing better is asserted.
Interests and limits
antirez works on Redis and on the DwarfStar project used as evidence. The post says Redis files are still edited by hand, so the author reviews. The author is unsure about young programmers. Nothing was tested.