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Ask HN: Become a 10x developer with LLM? Myth? Reality?

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Re: Ask HN: Become a 10x developer with LLM? Myth? Reality?

#51

Post by ParetoOptimal »

juanre wrote: post #36

I pay for ChatGPT-4. It's helping me program noticeably better and much faster, even with mid-sized projects involving many files. This is the process that I follow: - I write a system prompt with a succinct description of what I want to implement: "X is an online app that does Y, with these features: ..." I try to be exhaustive, and I write as I would if I were describing what I want to do to a very proficient progr…

I've essentially been using ChatGPT-4 in the same way and can confirm that the code it gives typically works. If not I just decompose pieces of it once and try again. If it fails there I just write it myself.

Re: Ask HN: Become a 10x developer with LLM? Myth? Reality?

#52

Post by kaba0 »

yawnxyz wrote: post #17

I've been able to use phind + Co-pilot to learn python, build and deploy a FastAPI service on the OpenAPI spec, without really knowing any of those things. Just ask GPT-4 how FastAPI works, how OpenAPI works, and ask it to format and write your YAML for you. It's an amazing TA — better than any I've had in undergrad, and way better than office hours, where your prof don't really care and wants to go back to their res…

> It's an amazing TA — better than any I've had in undergrad, and way better than office hours, where your prof don't really care and wants to go back to their research

It may be for trivial things (under which I mean that there is basically a verbatim answer on the internet that it had in its training data), but I don’t think it’s a good idea in general — if you talk with it on any topic that you are knowledgeable on, you notice it spews a bunch of nonsense and it is really hard to recognize that otherwise. And I’m not talking about just hard questions, something as basic as Java medior interview questions have sometimes glaring inconsistencies - it sounds techy and detailed, but ultimately wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Become a 10x developer with LLM? Myth? Reality?

#54

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

I don't know about 10x, but it has enabled me to explore new approaches much faster and write a lot of the code.

My old workflow would be to search documentation, blog posts, stack overflow and anything else that might give me a clue. Usually there isn't something that does exactly what I want and the documentation usually leaves a lot to be desired.

New workflow: please write some code using X library in Y language that does Z. Code usually mostly works. If there is anything I don't understand, I ask it to explain. It's like having an expert by my side teaching and writing for me.

Not sure it makes me 10x, but it does let me explore more things and get to an understanding a lot faster. I use some of that time saved to try out more ideas, so overall I'm not sure I'm hugely faster but what I can produce is a lot higher quality with better features.

Re: Ask HN: Become a 10x developer with LLM? Myth? Reality?

#55

Post by rsd79 »

I don’t think GPT4 beats an expert yet. That’s why expectations to ask it to build a complex commercial project from scratch are not realistic.

Where it shines is up-levelling the developer in areas he is not an expert. Need to jump out of Java development and process some data in Python with a special library? It will likely be more than 10x speed up for you to ask GPT4 for help. Learning a functional language? It will send tons of best practices your way. It’s also great in translating ideas between domains, one example are your requirements to code, but also code to tests, data to SQL etc.

I’m happy with how helpful it is in exploring implementation concepts - you can discuss problems you imagine and it will improve the suggestions. A bit like a brainstom guide for you. And sometimes it will surprise you with a much simpler idea which you’ve been overthinking.

It’s really great when you don’t expect it to be perfect. It fails very often do to unclear commands (limited prompt „memory” is counter intuitively for humans limiting what can be understood - how can it not remember what you can see a bit to the top?). It will always try to do what you ask for, but if you assume it will know what you know you will be disappointed.

Re: Ask HN: Become a 10x developer with LLM? Myth? Reality?

#56

Post by fzzzy »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #40
fzzzy wrote: post #4

Reality. ChatGPT has been working fine for me but I have a ton of programming experience so I can easily fix any mistakes. I will be upgrading to plus soon. Also, Copilot sometimes just does nothing, but there have been many instances now where it literally does exactly what I wanted. It's pretty random.

"Reality. ChatGPT has been working fine for me but I have a ton of programming experience so I can easily fix any mistakes. I will be upgrading to plus soon.' I think this is the reality of the current crop of LLMs. It's like having and assistant that you need to constantly check on. If you have lots of experience you can quickly catch the problems and move on but if you don't then it slows you down. My feeling is th…

Yes, I totally agree that it is more helpful for people that are already experts.
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