Live data from Hacker News

AI-enhanced development makes me more ambitious with my projects

simonwillison.net

471–480 of 519 posts

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

#471
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it speeds it up considerably. More heaps of messy software produced much faster.

Doesn't that get the people who aren't doing due diligence fired faster?

I think not. Based on my experience working with people that have negative productivity continually being promoted and jumping from project to project leaving a mess behind. But hey they always deliver their non-functional crap in time, pleasing upper management short term.

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

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me provide a counterpoint - ChatGPT made the code base more readable, it was able to integrate a few useful solutions the devs didn't know about, it helped write tests and even came up with a few good ones on its own.

Going meta for a bit: before you can use a tool to produce medical device software, that tool must be qualified for use. I'd really like to see what the qualification process for ChatGPT would look like.

What is the qualification for using StackOverflow or a library book? What's the qualification for the keyboard that might introduce errors (hello, MacBook) or the monitor that might render improperly?

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

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many colleagues could you ask "Can you write me a PoC for a horizontally scalable, probabilistic database in Rust, using Raft-based consensus? I couldn't agree more. I work as a software engineer in the medical field (think MRI's, X-rays, that sort of thing). I've started using ChatGPT all the time to write the code, and then I just fix it up a bit. So far it's working great!

Jesus! I hope this is some US fad, and I never ever come across those devices! Instead of using formal methods as they should they use AI, which is more or less the complete contrary.

The AI can generate your formal models.

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

#474
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would offer similar sentiment for aerospace.

The above two comments show the difference between software "engineers" vs "developers"...and none of the major social media platforms (and other consumer-level applications) employ engineers.

Other projects can't use waterfall development because they would like to actually produce something useful instead of what was decided at the start of the project.

This isn't the way pharmaceuticals are developed; we don't require the pharma companies to know how they work (and we shouldn't, because we don't know how many common safe drugs work). We validate them by testing them instead.

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

#475
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often incorrect context, incredibly biased context And as you learn more from different sources, you get better at identifying them. > or just plain outdated Which you can plainly see by looking at the date of publication. In the case of Stack Overflow, it is common that popular questions have newer answers which invalidate old ones and replace them at the top. > People who blindly copy and paste and ship are alway…

Sure, but do you have a solution to the problem that doesn't also hinder those who are using both StackOverflow and ChatGPT for "good"? Without a solution we're just whining about bad actors existing.

What I can find a bit more 'scary' is do they even need a deep understanding of it? ChatGPT will get it 'pretty close' and probably many times correct (as well as wrong). But if it is 'mostly right' then does it matter? Which is even more philosophical. As long as they can read the code and it does it like 95% right it may be just fine and they can fix it later? Heck they could even ask chatgpt what is wrong with it...

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

#476

Yesterday I asked chatgpt to compute the probability that two words of five letters both began with the same three letters and it could not solve it. It gave me about 10 different results but all were wrong, it seems the number five mislead the algorithm. Another question was computing the variance of the sum of 60 dices but omitting the results where the sum was greater than 200, the reasoning was incorrect in all c…

> Yesterday I asked chatgpt to compute the probability that two words of five letters both began with the same three letters and it could not solve it. IMO, this is irrelevant, because "normal people" would never ask this question. Because it has never been asked, there's also not a ChatGPT answer to it, because its answers are based on already existing information. This thinking that ChatGPT is AI is just wrong. It'…

Yes, kind of playing the "gotcha" question game.

I really see it kind of like having a good junior programmer or intern helping me out who has an incredibly broad amount of knowledge. Sometimes they need some coaching or gentle correction, sometimes you say, "I'll take it from here", but inevitably there are those times where you think, "Great job! I'm really impressed!"

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

#477
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going meta for a bit: before you can use a tool to produce medical device software, that tool must be qualified for use. I'd really like to see what the qualification process for ChatGPT would look like.

What is the qualification for using StackOverflow or a library book? What's the qualification for the keyboard that might introduce errors (hello, MacBook) or the monitor that might render improperly?

Book or StackOverflow: this isn't a "tool," and the developer is expected to have sufficient skill to evaluate the information provided. If they can't do this then they're not qualified for that project.

A keyboard would be an example of a source whose output is 100% verified: we assume that you can see what you're typing. A process with 100% verification does not need to be separately qualified or validated.

I'm not sure how monitor errors could factor into this, can you elaborate?

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tragedy is for those that feel and comedy is for those that think.

Perhaps you're making a point (that eludes me, BTW) by writing clever sounding twaddle. I hope so.

[dead]

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

#479

What I really love is the unbounded optimism of the AI. How many colleagues could you ask "Can you write me a PoC for a horizontally scalable, probabilistic database in Rust, using Raft-based consensus?" that would then just think for a second and go "Certainly! Let's start by ...". These people exist, but they're one in a thousand (or million?). ChatGPT basically does that for almost every prompt you throw at it. So…

Am I the only one that's been disappointed with GPT for coding? It's good at using common libraries and frameworks but for stuff using more niche libraries it fails miserably almost every time, to the extent that by the time I've debugged and written prompts to try and get it to do it properly I've spent more time than needed still good for handling a lot of grunge work and really useful for doing the stuff where I'm…

I've found it to be really helpful with refactoring code but not solving an entire problem.

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

#480
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers who use this for serious stuff, how goes your reasoning? Is it just a calculated risk? Reward is greater than the risk? It seems obvious that AI is the future, and that ChatGPT is the most advanced AI ever created. For me (in the medical industry), if something goes wrong and someone dies a horrible death, I can just say that I didn't write that code, ChatGPT did. Not my fault. Next time you are at the h…

I can't believe people are taking your comment seriously. How far has reality moved into parody, if a comment saying you'll be happy to blame ChatGPT when people die doesn't go far enough to give it away? Maybe they're just replying without having properly read your post, but that's not great either.

It's not hard to believe. Over the past few weeks, I've read several very serious comments that express a similar attitude, although not quite as blatantly.
Post reply on HN