Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prompt "engineering" is just writing prayers to forest faeries. Whilst BASIC/JavaScript/etc are all magic incantations to a child, a child will soon figure out there's underlaying logic, and learn the ability to reason about what code does, and what certain changes will do. With prompts, it's all faerie logic. There is nothing to learn, there are only magic incantations that change drastically if the model is updated…
In "The Information," James Gleick discusses a concept related to our current discourse. In the days when computers were merely an array of switching circuits, luminaries such as Claude Shannon believed that "thinking" could be captured in a structured format of logical representation. However, even with formally composable languages like JavaScript, a semblance of unpredictability — akin to the "faerie logic" metaph…
even with formally composable languages like JavaScript, a semblance of unpredictability — akin to the "faerie logic" metaphor — still persists
And they're ridiculed for it, and as you state, we design around them or replace such systems entirely.
making continual interaction with them unavoidable
Technology is never unavoidable or "inevitable". We can choose not to use it, or when to use it.
The notion that we can pass a set of code or words through them once and expect a flawless result is simply illogical.
Yet that is what we expect when we put these systems into production use, especially when many proposed use cases are user-facing and subject to injection attacks.
Whether it be the writing of adcopy, the processing of loan applications, or generating code, mistakes in these tasks have very real consequences.