Thank you for bringing the subject of LLM-generated prose. I'd like to first mention that I only had a cursory glance at 21452/21462, and my comment is about LLM-generated prose in general rather than this patch in particular.
My recent impression after reading an LLM-generated README in an OSS project (albeit not in Cassandra) was the feeling that I have started reading mid-paragraph, and the writing itself was witty and confusing, which ultimately lead me to closing the browser window rather than bothering to digest that text.
I tend to remove all LLM-generated comments from my own code. For me, clarity goes beyond comments in code: any artefact that another human is going to read (for example, a code-review post, or bug analysis/investigation), needs to pass a readability bar. Having that said, I hate to admit that my own writing style might have also changed for worse over the course of this year.
An additional reason (besides consistency with our existing comments and documentation) for having simpler language in documentation and code is the fact that for many of us English is not a first (and for some, not even a second) language. Maybe a native speaker can quickly digest and filter out all witticisms, but for folks like me it might be challenging.
+1 for simplifying the language for both AI- and human generated prose.
Hi all,
Anthropic’s current models are famous for generating overwrought metaphorical constructions like “the load-bearing seam” when referring to something as simple as an interface. r/ClaudeAI has dubbed this manner of speaking “Claudish.” Many users (including myself) have elaborate user prompts that try to tame the model, while others go as far as passing Opus/Fable-generated output through a competitor’s model to untangle it.
Like many, I find reading Claudish grating and artificial - like the taste of a Sweet ’N Low packet (aspartame), or listening to a 48kbps MP3 dominated by compression artifacts.
I’d like to start a discussion about project norms regarding model-generated comments and documentation in our codebase, largely prompted by the merge of CASSANDRA-21462 (5b34068).
I open with my gratitude for work to validate and harden cursor-based compaction. My local measurements land it between 1.7 - 2.4x the throughput of legacy iterator-based compaction – a stunning improvement that will make Cassandra faster and more stable. I also appreciate the focus on correctness and validation in this work, as it surfaced and resolved several serious issues.
The concern it prompts for me is that the commit marks the first introduction of Claudish into the codebase, and quite a lot of it.
Examples in the first 1/3 of the patch include:
– The zero case is load-bearing rather than an optimisation
– The seam is EVENT-shaped because {@link UnfilteredDescriptor}s are transient
– The row-side analogue of cell reconciliation, is load-bearing in the cursor's row
– A decoder defect is as likely as on-disk damage here, but that's the same ambiguity
– The mirror has already drifted from the upstream serializer once
_ The precondition is asserted rather than assumed
– The cursor compaction path and the reference path reach one decision. They did not always: the cursor carried a hand-mirrored copy
The linguistic style of Anthropic’s models is sharply out of step with comments in Cassandra’s codebase. Our comments are concise, flat, and matter-of-fact. Anthropic’s are littered with literary devices, metaphors, dependent clauses, adverbs, and read like a detective novel. They are also very verbose – unsurprising given they bill by the token.
I’d like to propose a norm for how we approach comments and documentation in the codebase. The proposal is that all comments and documentation should maintain our flat and neutral tone, and read as indistinguishable from human committer authorship. I’d like for us to normalize watching for this in review as well to maintain the quality of our in-tree documentation.
I’d also like to propose removing the Claudish in CASSANDRA-21462 and replacing it with comments and documentation that are in step with how we write.
Interested in others’ thoughts on this.
– Scott
[ This thread’s topic is limited to literary style in comments and documentation. If there are other topics related to model authorship or the patch above, please discuss them on a separate thread. ]
