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Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

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Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#101

Post by gopalv »

pedalpete wrote: post #97

Perhaps the title of the post has changed as it now reads "How Coders can Survive - and Thrive - in a ChatGPT world". My initial reaction when looking at the HN post title "Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI" made me think "we don't want to stay ahead, we want to leverage the new capabilities". Can you imagine a weaver thinking "how can I stay ahead of the loom?" It's crazy to try. Instead, figure ou…

> Can you imagine a weaver thinking "how can I stay ahead of the loom?"

Of course that happened and will happen again, but with the same results.

That's almost the exact origin of the word "Luddite", where people went around breaking steam powered looms.

The "treat AI like a smart intern" is basically the best scenario out there. I see this approach more often than the wielder of AI being entirely non-technical.

Github co-pilot at least is more like a power drill or a CNC machine rather than a robot writing all your code - or what a spreadsheet tool was to an accountant. The math is no longer the hard part, the rules outside turned into their domain expertise.

Teams of five are now cut down to one experienced dev or two.

That detail sucks much more for someone who is going to start in the industry next year than to the people who are already here. They're going to have to learn from the AI instead of people.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#102

Post by [deleted] »

oldstrangers wrote: post #39

My fear isn't that I'll be replaced, it's the technology becoming so good that it'll be kept far out of reach of the common person. I genuinely believe OpenAI knows what a GPT 5+ type world looks like, and they're probably having a lot of debate on how best to monetize it. They could practically charge anything in the world for it assuming it still undercuts the cost of hiring a human. One Nvidia super cluster runnin…

[deleted]

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#103

Post by sigstoat »

omgmajk wrote: post #2

> Software engineers should be critical of the outputs of large language models, as they tend to hallucinate and produce inaccurate or incorrect code. This seems to be the case more than not for certain tasks, anything assembler or C I have ever asked it has turned out to be at least somewhat wrong. Mixing styles and syntax all over the place. I am not afraid that some generative AI will take my job anytime soon.

> anything assembler or C I have ever asked it has turned out to be at least somewhat wrong

i've found that its quality is proportional to the amount of questions about the subject on the internet. if i ask it for help with popular javascript frameworks, it vastly improves my productivity (i'm not a frontend person). it still coughs up wrong stuff half the time, but even then it can cut through the constant churn of the frameworks' terminology and give me enough hint to find what i need in the docs quickly.

if i ask it about, say, specific details of the STM32 HAL, it knows just enough to come up with something that i'll waste my time reading.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#104

Post by AussieWog93 »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #62
arrowsmith wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it increases my productivity about 5-10% when working with the technologies I'm the most familiar with and use regularly (Elixir, Phoenix, JavaScript, general web dev.) But when I'm doing something unfamiliar and new, it's more like 90%. It's incredible. Recently at work, for example, I've been setting up a bunch of stuff with some new technologies and libraries that I'd never really used before. Without ChatG…

The thing is the hallucinations, I also wasted few hours trying to work on solutions with GPT where it just kept making up parameters and random functions.

Were you using GPT-3.5 or GPT-4?

GPT-4 reduces hallucinations by at least an order of magnitude, and hasn't failed me yet.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#105

Post by Izkata »

pedalpete wrote: post #97

Perhaps the title of the post has changed as it now reads "How Coders can Survive - and Thrive - in a ChatGPT world". My initial reaction when looking at the HN post title "Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI" made me think "we don't want to stay ahead, we want to leverage the new capabilities". Can you imagine a weaver thinking "how can I stay ahead of the loom?" It's crazy to try. Instead, figure ou…

From the source:
There isn't a [name="title"], so if HN pulls from [name="description"] it may not have changed.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#106

Post by Turskarama »

mattkevan wrote: post #86
yieldcrv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it can give you something that works out of the box, but fixing it requires even more effort Better to ask it for a bunch of small things and piece them together

Yes. Start small and build up. I’ve found it to be very forgetful and have to work function-by-function, giving it the current code as part of the next prompt. Otherwise it randomly changes class names, invents new bits that weren’t there before or forgets entire chunks of functionality. It’s a good discipline as I have to work out exactly what I want to achieve first and then build it up piece by piece. A great way…

IIRC its "memory" (actually input size, it remembers by taking its previous output as input) is only about 500 tokens, and that has to contain both your prompt and the beginning of the answer to hold relevance towards the end of its answer. So yes, it can't make anything bigger than maybe a function or two with any consistency. Writing a whole program is just not possible for an LLM without some other knowledge store for it to cross reference, and even then I have my doubts.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#107

Post by ionwake »

I find Gpt-4 is great at doing simple ffmpeg commands but the second I had a bug in a complex statement it just ended up creating a recursive behaviour of failing to fix it.

Which does waste time I am unsure of if it’s close to fixing something or just can’t - I find it hard to figure out.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#109

Post by anotherpaulg »

amusingimpala75 wrote: post #81
anotherpaulg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My open source command line tool aider [0] is specifically for this use case of working with GPT on an existing code base. Let me know if you have a chance to try it out. Here is a chat transcript [1] that illustrates how you can use aider to explore an existing git repo, understand it and then make changes. As another example I needed a new feature in the glow tool and was able to make a PR [2] for it, even though I…

This is an instance of the dangers of LLM. Because you (self-admittedly) know nothing about the language or codebase, you have no idea the semantically correct way to do things, so if GPT tells you to metaphorically jump off a cliff, you won’t know that it isn’t the right thing to do.

That certainly could be a concern. You are right, it’s important to review the code written by LLMs.

Did you look at the PR?

I reviewed it before submitting it. While I would have struggled to write it myself, I was able to review it and conclude that it was sensible and unlikely to be risky.

Of course it could have bugs that I missed. But so could any code I write myself in any language.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#110

Post by fnordpiglet »

jiggawatts wrote: post #90
fnordpiglet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs no matter how clever have no agency or creativity or ability to innovate, anticipate beyond what they’re prompted, etc. It’s crucial to realize that LLM chat interfaces disguise the fact they’re still completing a prompt. This isn’t AGI as AGI requires agency. GPT4/5 or whatever successor might be a key building block, and I suspect we’ve already discovered the missing elements in classical AI and the challenge…

> “No agency or creativity or ability to innovate, anticipate beyond what they’re prompted, etc.” Sadly, you’ve just described the majority of the developers I’ve had to work with recently. Most have no agency, write boilerplate code with no creativity, need their hand held every step of they way, and won’t do anything they’re not explicitly ordered to do. You probably work in an SV startup with a highly skilled work…

I’m describing the human mind, which all people have. But I get your point - and I think most of those people who aren’t particularly adept or skilled or interested in their jobs might find their jobs are more easily done by more adept or skilled or interested people. Consider digging tunnels. John Henry was skilled and adept and interested in what he did. He could beat the steam drill (at a cost!). But if you visit tunnel digs today isn’t not a thousand people slinging hammers, most of whom were unskilled and uninterested in the labor itself. It’s a thousand skilled engineers digging tunnels never dreamed of in John Henry’s day.
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