[HN Gopher] Show HN: File-by-file AI-generated comments for your...
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       Show HN: File-by-file AI-generated comments for your codebase
        
       My friends and I were complaining about having to decipher
       incomprehensible code one day and decided to pass the code through
       GPT to see if it could write easily understandable comments to help
       us out. It turns out that GPT can but it was still a hassle to
       generate comments for large files.  So we decided to develop a
       basic web application that automatically integrates with your
       Github repository, generate comments, create a pull request and
       send you an email when it is all done.  There is definitely a lot
       more that can be done but we wanted to gain feedback on whether
       this is a problem that you face too. Do you often find it
       challenging to understand complex code? Do you have difficulties in
       writing informative comments? And if so, would you find value in a
       tool that can automatically generate comments for your code?
       Really appreciate any feedback and suggestions! Thanks in advance!
        
       Author : swiftstart
       Score  : 5 points
       Date   : 2023-05-23 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (swiftstart.vercel.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (swiftstart.vercel.app)
        
       | gumballindie wrote:
       | Cool idea, but for me the difficult part is understanding the
       | author's intention rather than the syntax. And thats is what
       | needs solving. Not just at a high level but in detail.
        
       | michaelfeathers wrote:
       | If they can be generated from the source they probably shouldn't
       | be in the source. Maybe it should be an IDE plugin that displays
       | comments for code as you hover over it.
        
         | q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
         | Agreed this makes much more sense, from both a UX perspective
         | as well as a code-cleanliness perspective.
         | 
         | There's also the AI evolution question. When we have GPT-10
         | next year, do we go through and regenerate all the comments?
         | That would introduce a lot of noise into the repo's commit
         | history and `git blame`, which I think is another indicator
         | that the repo is not the right place to store this sort of
         | thing. (And it'd have to be done again every time the AI got
         | smarter...)
         | 
         | Having the AI perched on your shoulder and just analyzing the
         | code as you look at it seems much simpler. Like a friendly,
         | modern version of the pirate's parrot.
        
         | PeterisP wrote:
         | The way I see it, I'd expect that the generated comments would
         | often get some human attention immediately afterward. Even if
         | they don't get edited but there's just a crude "filter" where
         | the developer keeps some comments and throws out those which
         | are undesirable in some way, that's very useful signal which
         | _can 't_ be re-generated from the source and thus needs to be
         | stored somewhere along with the code.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-23 23:01 UTC)