this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
92 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1276 readers
140 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 34 points 3 days ago (3 children)

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@beehaw.org 27 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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"????

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.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Programmers hate programming and love code reviewing, right? Right?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

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.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I didn't even read the article. Still believe in the prompts.

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@swlabr @jaschop

I fixed the quote from the article "programmers are not known for being great at writing prompts because many of us find the whole idea offensive and stupid"

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.

[–] regrub@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

Prompt engineering is the same as software engineering, right?