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AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

simonwillison.net

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Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#11

Post by Sai_ »

hallqv wrote: post #3
jhrmnn wrote: post #2

Ok, so when people say that they use ChatGPT for coding, they use it as a code snippet library? Here, a function that has been probably written million times before in some similar form, and a template for a simple web app.

Wrong, gpt4 is very capable of writing “new” and complex code. Also gpt4 >> gpt3.5 for coding.

Do you have a non-trivial example of this?

I tried to make GPT-4 create an algorithm for an enhanced tic-tac-toe game (think Wordle vs Quordle to somewhat visualize the difference) and it's failing miserably.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#12

Post by shostack »

zamfi wrote: post #6

@Simon, I love this. And one day, in the not too distant future, a few old wizened graybeards, like you and I and the other folks on this site who have been writing code from scratch for 20 years, will be the magicians who walk the earth among mere mortals who only learned to code with the assistance of ChatGPT. We will be the ones with the preattentive syntax parsing in our brains that let us simply see basic syntax…

And then we'll have people praying to the Omnissiah with their prompts.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#13

Post by hallqv »

josemrb wrote: post #9
jhrmnn wrote: post #2

Ok, so when people say that they use ChatGPT for coding, they use it as a code snippet library? Here, a function that has been probably written million times before in some similar form, and a template for a simple web app.

I use GPT-4, it's like pairing up with a junior developer who read all the documentation. I follow the same steps as always to design the code, but when it's time to implement something, I ask the bot to do it, then I review it and move on to the next function.

Exactly. You still have to command it.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#14

Post by belugacat »

zamfi wrote: post #6

@Simon, I love this. And one day, in the not too distant future, a few old wizened graybeards, like you and I and the other folks on this site who have been writing code from scratch for 20 years, will be the magicians who walk the earth among mere mortals who only learned to code with the assistance of ChatGPT. We will be the ones with the preattentive syntax parsing in our brains that let us simply see basic syntax…

I had a former coworker who bought a Tesla very shortly after getting her license, and relied almost exclusively on autopilot. I rode with her a few times when she offered to drive me home, it was legit terrifying when she had to drive in manual mode to eg get out of a parking garage.

Years later, I don’t think her driving has meaningfully improved.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#15

Post by cypress66 »

ChatGTP wrote: post #8
hallqv wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, gpt4 is very capable of writing “new” and complex code. Also gpt4 >> gpt3.5 for coding.

Welcome to the age of the unbenchmarkable product. You say one thing, someone says another, and here we are...

There are programming benchmarks though (data contamination issues left aside)

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#16

Post by deafpolygon »

> This doesn’t just make me more productive: it lowers my bar for when a project is worth investing time in at all.

This is the real benefit here. AI isn't taking jobs, it's going to enhance them - once we learn how to use the tools we have available to us.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#17

Post by hallqv »

Sai_ wrote: post #11
hallqv wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, gpt4 is very capable of writing “new” and complex code. Also gpt4 >> gpt3.5 for coding.

Do you have a non-trivial example of this? I tried to make GPT-4 create an algorithm for an enhanced tic-tac-toe game (think Wordle vs Quordle to somewhat visualize the difference) and it's failing miserably.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 there are a lot of examples in this paper.

Also it’s not that it writes perfect code straight away and you never have to re-prompt or change anything manually. But it’s still an insane speed-up.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#18

Post by blueorange8 »

belugacat wrote: post #14
zamfi wrote: post #6

@Simon, I love this. And one day, in the not too distant future, a few old wizened graybeards, like you and I and the other folks on this site who have been writing code from scratch for 20 years, will be the magicians who walk the earth among mere mortals who only learned to code with the assistance of ChatGPT. We will be the ones with the preattentive syntax parsing in our brains that let us simply see basic syntax…

I had a former coworker who bought a Tesla very shortly after getting her license, and relied almost exclusively on autopilot. I rode with her a few times when she offered to drive me home, it was legit terrifying when she had to drive in manual mode to eg get out of a parking garage. Years later, I don’t think her driving has meaningfully improved.

Unfortunately this seems to be true of a lot of people that don't have tesla's as well ;)

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#19

Post by GaggiX »

I agree, it also helps me to get things started, sometimes when I want to start a new project I need to learn new tools and/or APIs but the documentation can leave a lot to be desired, so the mental overhead could be too much that I get bored soon if I don't get results.

I have abused chatGPT so much that I have an impulse to talk to other programs that are not the chat bot, like the terminal and VS Code, when they give me an error that I cannot understand, just to ask them "why?", like a premonitory dream I think I have an idea how chat bot could be integrated into every piece of software sometimes in the future.

Re: AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

#20

Post by ChatGTP »

cypress66 wrote: post #15
ChatGTP wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the age of the unbenchmarkable product. You say one thing, someone says another, and here we are...

There are programming benchmarks though (data contamination issues left aside)

Yes, which is funny because there was an article on here with some pretty hard data which showed not much difference or maybe worse performance from GPT4 than 3.5-turbo.

You'll likely refute that as your mind is already made up, but there you go, another conflicting and confusing data point.

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