wwfn
6 hours ago
Tangential (but topical in that "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing" is also on the front page):
Is the generated python code in the example wrong?
The prompt
> Develop a Python function that removes any falsey values from a list. Return the modified list without creating a new one.
Is answered with list comprehension, which makes a new list and leaves the original unmodified (never mind that the *args input necessarily can't be a modifiable list?)
def remove_falsey_values(*args): return [val for val in args if val]
def remove_falsey_values(l):
for i in reversed(range(len(l))):
if not l[i]: l.pop(i)
# returned list is linked to input l
return l
a = [1, 0, False, 'foo']
x = remove_falsey_values(a)
x[0] = 2
print(a) # [2,'foo']hecanjog
6 hours ago
It doesn't fit the requirement to modify the list in place, but the prompt itself contradicts the requirements by asking explicitly for the implementation to use *args and a list comprehension.
wwfn
6 hours ago
Ahh I didn't see the full original prompt -- it's overflowing into a horz scroll for me. I thought it was the "critique loop" that injected the *args requirement. I guess garbage in, garbage out. Still unfortunate example to use.
desideratum
3 hours ago
Oh I wouldn't be surprised. This is a sample from one of the OSS code datasets I'd used, which are all generated synthetically using LLMs. Data is indeed the moat.
nusl
an hour ago
Why would you modify the original list and return it with the second example? Honestly the first is better
highphive
an hour ago
The question isn't really what's better practice, the question is whether the code follows the prompt. The first example does not.
__s
4 hours ago
def remove_falsey_values(l):
l[:] = (x for x in l if x)semiinfinitely
3 hours ago
your second function is the type of bad code you get from people trying to program python like its c
wwfn
8 minutes ago
Absolutely! And the list.pop version is multiple orders of magnitude slower. But I took the prompt to be asking for in-place modification of the existing list. Comprehension does not do that.