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Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#111

Post by ehutch79 »

anotherpaulg wrote: post #109
amusingimpala75 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s not the promise though. The promise is “this app will generate a whole codebase”.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#112

Post by robbomacrae »

dave333 wrote: post #54

Occurs to me as a retired 69 year old former coder that AI makes us old geezers and geezesses somewhat competitive again with our younger colleagues. Need to learn yet another new framework? Let AI do the nitty gritty bit. Capitalize on your experience and higher level know how.

This is absolutely the case. You can now code in any language using ChatGPT 4. Just say what you want from it like you were interviewing a developer. Look for potential bugs in the output and ask it about them. Look for memory leaks and ask. Then when you can't see anything else wrong with it ask it whether there are any bugs or edge cases that might cause problems.

Anyone with a bit of experience to know the right questions to ask can now code in any language or platform.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#113

Post by robbomacrae »

ionwake wrote: post #107

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.

It can indeed sometimes get stuck in a rut.. particularly with regex! I find that in such cases, if I can't take over and fix the issue then it sometimes helps to start a new chat (not sure if there is a clear context command) and approach it from a different angle.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#114

Post by robbomacrae »

If you haven't already I urge you to try getting ChatGPT4 to do most of your programming for you. Just ask it interview style coding questions and refine the answer with more interview like follow on questions.

And for making changes to existing code, you might need to check with your company's policies on this, but if you're ok to paste code into ChatGPT you can also just ask how to change it to do Y instead of X.

Copilot is.... ok? StarCoder is pretty bad IMHO. ChatGPT4 is really empowering.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#115

Post by cornel_io »

claytongulick wrote: post #34
thumbuddy wrote: post #5

I'm surviving just fine by not using any LLMs.

Me too. I'm not an expert, but I'd say I'm a strongly average vim user. But even at that skill level with vim, I haven't seen an area where LLMs would increase my velocity. Quite the opposite. It would completely interrupt my flow to have to constantly stop and do a code review while I'm writing. With good plugins, templates and macros in vim/vscode - velocity writing code isn't the issue. The stuff that takes all th…

Have you tried to develop in a language or environment that you have 0 familiarity with? I find in those cases I'm up and running at least 3-4x as fast, cutting weeks off the learning curve.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#116

Post by [deleted] »

robbomacrae wrote: post #114

If you haven't already I urge you to try getting ChatGPT4 to do most of your programming for you. Just ask it interview style coding questions and refine the answer with more interview like follow on questions. And for making changes to existing code, you might need to check with your company's policies on this, but if you're ok to paste code into ChatGPT you can also just ask how to change it to do Y instead of X. C…

[deleted]

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#117

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Step 1: Be a consultant

Step 2: Wait for all shit to go to hell

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit

AI might be good for helping improve productivity, but those machines are still no smarter than the average person on the internet, and the average person on the internet is far dumber than the average developer.

It's this year's blockchain. Are there successful uses of blockchains? Sure. Walmart uses them in Canada and has streamlined their logistics and fulfillment up there by leaps and bounds. But that's a very specialized use case.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#118

Post by hyperbovine »

Filligree wrote: post #44
firebirdn99 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 100%. It's helpful at filling out some functions maybe if you name them correctly, and boiler plate code. Eventually, they will get better, because these things get orders better with orders more scale. Society has to do something about all the jobs at that point, but we'll hopefully get a sense of how close/far is that, with ChatGPT 5, and the next versions coming up.

The biggest benefit, I’ve found, is it makes me comment my code. If I can make the AI understand what I want, then it turns out that three months later I’ll also be able to understand the code.

What's the point of comments then. Just feed it back in in three months.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#119

Post by deathmonger5000 »

robbomacrae wrote: post #114

If you haven't already I urge you to try getting ChatGPT4 to do most of your programming for you. Just ask it interview style coding questions and refine the answer with more interview like follow on questions. And for making changes to existing code, you might need to check with your company's policies on this, but if you're ok to paste code into ChatGPT you can also just ask how to change it to do Y instead of X. C…

I wrote a great tool for this: https://github.com/ferrislucas/promptr

It’s great for making changes to existing code because it automatically includes the relevant files for context.

Re: Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

#120

Post by keenmaster »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #78
jiggawatts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only widely available LLM-based autocomplete is GitHub Copilot, which is based on GPT 3. Notably, it's not GPT 3.5, it's 3.0, which is pretty stupid as far as the state of the art goes. The upcoming Copilot X will be based on GPT 4, which has "sparks of AGI". In my experience there is no comparison. GPT 3 is barely good enough for some trivial tab-complete tasks. GPT 4 can do quite complex tasks like generating d…

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…

“Our brains are composed of many models, some heuristic, some optimizers, some solvers, some constrainers, and some generative.”

We need an AI that iteratively tweaks its own architecture (to recreate and surpass those modules which are necessary for human thought), and maps out hardware enhancements* to accommodate the new architecture.

*I seem to remember Google working on ML software that proposes new chip designs a few years ago

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