Ok, so we have that software written by AI, AI is clever, it does not need good variable names or functions/methods/class names, some of the stuff it will call according to passed specification so it will be understandable, but the further it goes, everything will get more generic, taken from kirjillion of other code snippets on Github. And it all will be working. Until someone starts testing this and finds a bug. An…
I believe you never use ChatGPT. I'm not claiming you never use GPT4, I'm claiming you never use even GPT3.5. If you did you will notice its problem is the opposite of what you describe. Especially: > it does not need good variable names or functions/methods/class names, It's the exact opposite. It's too good at naming things. It insists to use variable/function names that make sense in plain english, and often make…
Post-GPT Computing
301–310 of 504 posts
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#302The devil is entirely in the details unfortunately, and it will make GPT basically unusable for anyone but existing software engineers for doing actual non-trivial programming tasks. At least how it is now.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#303Last week I used ChatGPT for the first time for a real world task at work. It was a self-contained lambda function to perform some admin tasks, so it seemed like an ideal fit. Although the experience was good, it's far from the end of programmers. This was my experience: * Although ChatGPT is pretty good at generating code, it kept making simple mistakes such as calling non-existing APIs or introducing bugs. Some of…
My experience was different than yours. I had an existential crisis, and it only got worse the more I used it. To be clear, I did not think ChatGPT was ready to replace me now (and, mind you, I only used the 3.5 version of ChatGPT). But it was so easy for me to see how in just a few years it can accelerate its pace of learning. I was discussing a bug with a colleague, so for curiosity's sake I decided to plug a simil…
This video kind of scared me even more.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
... and starve? You know what kind of people create content of their own dreams? Artists. And the stereotype isn't "well-fed artists" for a good reason.
> You know what kind of people create content of their own dreams? Every entrepreneur that ever existed.
Yeah and 90% of startups fail. Again, for a good reason.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#305Not a ton of new material for me to think over, but did catch this random mention, which is super cool & I didn't know:
> OpenAI made the extraordinary and IMO under-discussed decision to use an open API specification format, where every API provider hosts a text file on their website saying how to use their API. This means even this plugin ecosystem isn’t a walled garden that only the first mover controls. I don’t fully understand why they went this way, but I’m grateful they did.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#306Last week I used ChatGPT for the first time for a real world task at work. It was a self-contained lambda function to perform some admin tasks, so it seemed like an ideal fit. Although the experience was good, it's far from the end of programmers. This was my experience: * Although ChatGPT is pretty good at generating code, it kept making simple mistakes such as calling non-existing APIs or introducing bugs. Some of…
You made me think: it feels like ChatGPT is just a less accurate StackOverflow answer generator. The culture of needing to use StackOverflow is not a good one, so I'm not sure why people are considering ChatGPT to be.
Yes, and at least StackOverflow will often give you some minority opinion, not just a snippet to be pasted into your code. Especially if something a little tricky like cryptography.
Consider this classic: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12122159/how-to-do-a-htt...
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#307So I think the thing people aren’t getting is this: it doesn’t matter that AIs can write code. That’s not how it’s going to replace us. With a big enough AI, when we’re ready, we won’t have to write software. It will be the software. via https://fosstodon.org/@praeclarum/110070954879714216
I don't think this is a wrong take and I'm excited for some version of this future. However, I'm skeptical we'll get to this anytime in the next 30 years.
As of right now, even if ChatGPT were to generate 99% accurate responses, it's quite a chore to communicate with it in full sentences. I don't want to have to explain my business in full painstaking detail and then upload tax documents to a system that can then output an answer in book form back to me.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#308I am currently doing some difficult work that involves figuring out the right computational geometry algorithms to apply to my dataset in order to get the answers my users need in a reasonable time. ChatGPT is of no use to me there.
When I need to ask for boilerplate code for fetching a web resource or using a well-defined API, ChatGPT is great.
ChatGPT has made the mundane plumbing a lot easier. It is a threat to plumbers at this point. Many of those plumbers are now freed up to do more valuable work. I am happy to have it, so I can focus on higher value work.
If your only skill is at this kind of low level plumbing, you are in danger. But I doubt this is the case for most.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
This skepticism absolutely baffles me. Have you been using gpt-4? To unlock gpt for real you have to be careful to prompt it correctly and find a way to improve the feedback loop for improving code. It is only a matter of time until tools arrive that integrate this into your development environment and give it access to test/console output such that it can suggest code and iterate over the result. It's not perfect ye…
So... nothing changes. It will be the tool for which you will need to manually construct prompts and clean up output (including imagined non-existent APIs). The availability of a button inside an IDE doesn't make this a fundamental change in how we work
If the button can do, let's say, half or more of the work for you when you press it, you're lying to yourself if you think it won't change anything.
Re: Post-GPT Computing
#310Last week I used ChatGPT for the first time for a real world task at work. It was a self-contained lambda function to perform some admin tasks, so it seemed like an ideal fit. Although the experience was good, it's far from the end of programmers. This was my experience: * Although ChatGPT is pretty good at generating code, it kept making simple mistakes such as calling non-existing APIs or introducing bugs. Some of…
I'm a PM who is relatively technical, but I haven't written more than a few lines of code (stuff like minor modifications to my Shopify site) in a decade. I saw a bunch of people talking about how GPT helped them code stuff on Twitter, so I thought I'd give it a try. Right now I'm building a sort of simple, mock version of the type of software that integrates with my company's APIs. I've successfully managed to creat…
It'll definitely help people learn faster - the "what to try next" problem is HUGE in programming discovery.
Modern languages (and tools like autocomplete) have already helped that a lot compared to assembly code or binary, this looks like the biggest jump in a long time. The path of programming so far has been moving from "describe how to do something" to "describe what to do" which this is certainly in line with.