Hey y’all,
I’ve been tasked with deconstructing a 100k line SPSS/SAS program and rewriting it in C++ or Python. I understand the basics – data ETL / munging, statistical models and a choice framework.
Here’s the problem – it was written by an ex-employee who was a mad-scientist type. There are ZERO explanatory comments. There is no documentation. There are chunks of code commented out with no explanation. What comments exist are nonsensical or are her rantings. Some of them are insults hurled at herself, the company leadership, or professional economists (including at least 1 nobel laureate) etc.
No LLM has a context window large enough to handle the whole thing and it’s just monsterous and dense. Besides dropping 5k lines at a time into ChatGPT or something… what can I do to get a handle on this? Should I even bother? I don’t know the language but I do know the theoreical economics the models are based on – hence my invovlement.
How would you go about getting to grips w/ this thing? Any suggestions welcome.
It’s all 1 big file. Probably the thing that freaks me out the most. NOTHING is divided up, different bits just appear as they occured to her to write. It’s insanity … but it works!
submitted by /u/DrSFalken
[link] [comments]
r/cscareerquestions Hey y’all, I’ve been tasked with deconstructing a 100k line SPSS/SAS program and rewriting it in C++ or Python. I understand the basics – data ETL / munging, statistical models and a choice framework. Here’s the problem – it was written by an ex-employee who was a mad-scientist type. There are ZERO explanatory comments. There is no documentation. There are chunks of code commented out with no explanation. What comments exist are nonsensical or are her rantings. Some of them are insults hurled at herself, the company leadership, or professional economists (including at least 1 nobel laureate) etc. No LLM has a context window large enough to handle the whole thing and it’s just monsterous and dense. Besides dropping 5k lines at a time into ChatGPT or something… what can I do to get a handle on this? Should I even bother? I don’t know the language but I do know the theoreical economics the models are based on – hence my invovlement. How would you go about getting to grips w/ this thing? Any suggestions welcome. It’s all 1 big file. Probably the thing that freaks me out the most. NOTHING is divided up, different bits just appear as they occured to her to write. It’s insanity … but it works! submitted by /u/DrSFalken [link] [comments]
Hey y’all,
I’ve been tasked with deconstructing a 100k line SPSS/SAS program and rewriting it in C++ or Python. I understand the basics – data ETL / munging, statistical models and a choice framework.
Here’s the problem – it was written by an ex-employee who was a mad-scientist type. There are ZERO explanatory comments. There is no documentation. There are chunks of code commented out with no explanation. What comments exist are nonsensical or are her rantings. Some of them are insults hurled at herself, the company leadership, or professional economists (including at least 1 nobel laureate) etc.
No LLM has a context window large enough to handle the whole thing and it’s just monsterous and dense. Besides dropping 5k lines at a time into ChatGPT or something… what can I do to get a handle on this? Should I even bother? I don’t know the language but I do know the theoreical economics the models are based on – hence my invovlement.
How would you go about getting to grips w/ this thing? Any suggestions welcome.
It’s all 1 big file. Probably the thing that freaks me out the most. NOTHING is divided up, different bits just appear as they occured to her to write. It’s insanity … but it works!
submitted by /u/DrSFalken
[link] [comments]