• swlabr@awful.systems
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    2 months ago

    have they tried writing better prompts? my lived experience says that because it works for me, it should work as long as you write good prompts. prompts prompts prompts. I am very smart. /s

    • luciole (he/him)@beehaw.org
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      2 months ago

      Oh wow. The article says basically that but without the /s and then it gets even better. This is according to Mister AI Professor Ethan Mollick From The University Of Warthon and the link goes to a tweet (the highest form of academia) saying:

      The problem with calling “prompt engineering” a form of programming is that it isn’t like what we call coding

      In fact, coders are often bad at prompting because AI doesn’t do things consistently or work like code. The best prompters I know can’t code at all. They “teach” the AI.

      Which is just great considering the next excuse in the text is:

      this is due to insufficient reviews, either because the company has not implemented robust code quality and code-review practices, or because developers are scrutinising AI-written code less than they would scrutinise their own code

      So who the fuck even reviews the prompt engineers’ code sludge, Mister AI Professor Of Twitter?

      Whole text is such a sad cope.

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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          2 months ago

          Soon they will try to fix this problem by having 2 forms of LLM do team coding. The surprised Pikachu faces will be something

          • arbitraryidentifier@awful.systems
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            2 months ago

            Looking forward to the LLM vs LLM PRs with hundreds of back and forth commit-request changes-commit cycles. Most of it just flipping a field between final and not final.

      • V0ldek@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        developers are scrutinising AI-written code less than they would scrutinise their own code

        Wait, is this how Those People claim that Copilot actually “improved their productivity”? They just don’t fucking read what the machine output?

        I was always like “how can Copilot make me code faster if all it does is give me bad code to review which takes more than just writing it” and the answer is “what do you mean review”???

        • arbitraryidentifier@awful.systems
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          2 months ago

          Wait, is this how Those People claim that Copilot actually “improved their productivity”? They just don’t fucking read what the machine output?

          Yes, that’s exactly what it is. That and boilerplate, but it probably makes all kinds of errors that they don’t noticed, because the build didn’t fail.

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        I’m reminded of the guy in a previous thread who claimed LLMs helped him as a rubber duck partner. You know - the troubleshooting technique named for its efficacy when working with a bath toy.

  • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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    2 months ago

    "When asked about buggy AI [code], a common refrain is ‘it is not my code,’ meaning they feel less accountable because they didn’t write it.”

    Strong they cut all my deadlines in half and gave me an OpenAI API key, so fuck it energy.

    He stressed that this is not from want of care on the developer’s part but rather a lack of interest in “copy-editing code” on top of quality control processes being unprepared for the speed of AI adoption.

    You don’t say.

  • zbyte64@awful.systems
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    2 months ago

    For some reason when I read this I am reminded of our “highly efficient rail” which often derails

    • towerful@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      Reminds me of the story of the old engineer asked to come in and fix some machine in a factory.

      The engineer inspects the machine, marks it with some chalk, then strikes the chalk mark with a hammer.
      The machine works again.
      The company asks for an itemised invoice after seeing the initial invoice for $10k.
      To which they received:

      • hitting chalk mark with hammer: $1.
      • knowing where to place the chalk mark: $9,999

      GPT suffers from garbage-in garbage-out just as much as a search engine does.
      Knowing how to find search results to fix your specific situation is a skill.
      Utilising GPT for such a task is equally a skill. With the added bonus of GPT randomly pulling the perfect API/Library out of its ass

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Yeah I feel like once people realize AI chatbots like ChatGPT are largely just search engines with AutoTldrBot built in, they’ll be better at using them. ChatGPT is great for bouncing ideas off of or rubber-ducking through a solution. But just like with StackOverflow answers, you as the developer need to be able to recognize when ChatGPT is just spouting garbage, when it’s getting you close to the answer, what adjustments you need to make to make its answers work for your situation, etc. In it’s current state, it will never just magically hand you a fully developed, robust, well-integrated, complete solution though, as much as tech CEOs want it to.

        • froztbyte@awful.systems
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          2 months ago

          you as the developer need to be able to recognize when ChatGPT is just spouting garbag

          easy: all the time