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Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

maggieappleton.com

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Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#171

Post by fragmede »

_heimdall wrote: post #128
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"running yourself over with a car" feels very different from "learning to use LLMs to your advantage".

The GP was pointing out that learning to use an LLM, in their opinion, would stop them from learning other new skills and erode their existing ones. In that context I think the analogy holds. Using an LLM halts your learning, as does running yourself over with a car. It's an exaggerated point for sure, but I think it points to the fact that you don't have to learn to use LLMs simply because it's a skill you could lea…

what's better, I stare at my code for 3 hours to find a missing semicolon, or ChatGPT explains it to me in minutes. what lesson am I learning by staring at my code?

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#172

Post by JohnMakin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #103
FlyingSnake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every “Copy-Paste from SO” answer was accompanied with lots of caveats from other human commentators. This feedback loop is sorely missing with LLM coding assistants.

LLMs literally read all that commentary in training, so they're taking it into account, not regurgitating the top-voted answer from SO. They're arguably better at this than junior devs.

That isn’t how they work and that’s probably why you’re being downvoted

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#173

Post by fragmede »

JohnFen wrote: post #151
fragmede wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you've discouraged yourself from learning the skill of using an LLM to help you code.

I would disagree with that take, actually. Perhaps I haven't yet figured out how to leverage LLMs for that (and don't get me wrong, I have certainly experimented as has most of my team), but I'm not discouraged from it. I'm just trying to be clear-eyed about the risks. As an example, code completion tools in IDEs will cause me to get rusty in important baseline skills. LLMs present a similar sort of risk.

Are you preparing for some sort of cataclysmic world event that results in us living in a world where IDEs with code completion don't exist, and we're tested on whether we can code without code completion? letting those skills get rusty because other skills are being sharpened is not a bad thing. if they're getting rusty because you're not doing anything else, then that's a bad thing, but you can get yourself out of lazy mental traps, no matter where they are, if you're proactive and diligent, no matter the skill.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#174

Post by _heimdall »

fragmede wrote: post #171
_heimdall wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP was pointing out that learning to use an LLM, in their opinion, would stop them from learning other new skills and erode their existing ones. In that context I think the analogy holds. Using an LLM halts your learning, as does running yourself over with a car. It's an exaggerated point for sure, but I think it points to the fact that you don't have to learn to use LLMs simply because it's a skill you could lea…

what's better, I stare at my code for 3 hours to find a missing semicolon, or ChatGPT explains it to me in minutes. what lesson am I learning by staring at my code?

The skill of finding errors is actually a very useful one. I can count on one hand how many times I've made similar mistakes in code, after 3 hours staring at it that lesson really sticks and you don't make it again.

When an algorithm tries to fix it for you you only learn how to send the code to the algorithm to fix it for you. It's convenient in the moment for sure, but you haven't learned how to fix your own code and won't know how to fix it when the algorithm is the cause of the error.

That also ignores secondary risks, like giving your codebase to a nonprofit / very much for profit company. That isn't always possible depending on the codebase, and in general why bother giving them access to it when you instead learn how to find your own missing semicolons? Why spin up a pipe of GPUs and burn all that power rather than learning to do it yourself?

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#175

Post by [deleted] »

rickydroll wrote: post #164
finnthehuman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had one or more junior programmers working for you writing code according to what you specify, would you have the same worry? I try hard to avoid the scenario where junior programmers write things they don’t understand. That’s actually my biggest frustration and the difference between juniors I enjoy vs loathe working with. There are only so many ways to remain supportive and gently say “no, for real, learn…

Thank you for explaining. I totally agree with you about being supportive and the level of capability. For me, both Copilot and ChatGPT are reasonably skilled junior programmers. They understand about 70% of what I'm looking for. I can correct them with one revised prompt and get them to the 80 to 90% range. At three prompts, I assume GPT/Co-Pilot is an idiot. In both cases of non-bio and bio junior programmers, I al…

[deleted]

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#176

Post by logicallee »

xdavidliu wrote: post #158
logicallee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Too many people assume ChatGPT (and similar LLMs) are capable of reasoning. It's not. Sure it is, just like a child or someone not very good at reasoning. You can test ChatGPT yourself on some totally novel ad hoc reasoning task you invent for the task, with a single correct conclusion that takes reasoning to arrive at and it will probably get it if it's really easy, even if you take great pains to make it something…

As you are making the point, can you please provide the example? If it's really new, posting it as a comment here is not likely to affect LLM training, at least not for a day or so. And even if it is, you can still provide the examples that you are thinking of?

You can come up with all the examples you want. Make up your own and try it. Here is an example as you asked for, I made it up: https://chatgpt.com/share/211da88c-d97c-4f18-9984-bed783d0f2...

Just make up your own.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#178

Post by advael »

generic92034 wrote: post #149
KittenInABox wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the new thing that will be happening is that junior developers are dependent on chatgpt and ai for a knowledge base, which is itself powered by companies completely outside of their control. Worst case scenario is that I can always write my own interpreter, with which I can write my own development environments, etc etc. because I have the knowledge. New developers will end up in a state where if chatgpt deci…

> New developers will end up in a state where if chatgpt decides to ban you from their services your career is SOL. Is that not an unlikely thing to happen at least for developers working as company employees? The company I am working for has a contract with several LLM providers and there is no option to ban individual employees, as far as I am aware. For freelancing developers the risks might be greater, but then y…

I mean this scenario as described is not a huge stretch given it happens to people using stuff like artistic software already. Shitty technology adoption curve for tool dependency and occasional rugpulls of it through bans has hit lots of creative professions at various times. First it's a subscription. Then you don't like the TOS but you can't walk. Then you already violated some TOS term you didn't know about and your stuff no longer works, maybe lost yer whole portfolio too. Don't tell me a business wouldn't

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#179

Post by cxr »

lelanthran wrote: post #99
bawolff wrote: post #18

Personally i'd rather we bridge the gap between using excel and writing python with something that is between the two, rather than relying on LLMs. Call me a skeptic, but i remain very unconvinced that LLMs will be the enabling tool that lets non programmers program.

> Personally i'd rather we bridge the gap between using excel and writing python with something that is between the two, rather than relying on LLMs. Maybe Lua[1] and Excel. Python's significant whitespace is unsuitable for doing the one-liners that spreadsheet experts do. Writing code for the spreadsheet should not require putting that code in a separate file just so the significant whitespace can be maintained. Wha…

Excel's cramped formula bar that defaults to one line is, to borrow a turn of phrase from Raskin, not at all something that is necessary—it is merely customary.

There's no (good) reason that when you start to type a formula or you click on a cell that has a formula already in it that Excel doesn't make an ephemeral sidebar overlay appear with an 80-column text editor in it. There's no good reason that it doesn't run a gofmt-style code prettifier on long, sprawling formulae. There's no good reason that clones like Google Docs don't do this, either. The best time would have been when we transitioned to widescreens.

Spreadsheet programming is bad because neither Microsoft nor its competitors actually care about making it good.

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