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The user is visibly frustrated

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Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#171

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

em-bee wrote: post #2

behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. not doing what i expect, or rather not being able to define what i can expect is what's bothering me. but the real kicker is: getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment. as much as i sympathize with the idea that AI tools can be more helpful than they cause pain, i am simply not interested in working…

But they behave predictable- if you think of it not as a conversation, but any conversation you ever saw on the internet, on all possible worlds. Every stackoverflow post, every github issue. And your reply, your tone, picks between this many worlds.

If you become the master, it becomes the pupil, if you become the pupil, it attempts to scholar you. You can see it in the tone it takes, where you are in this canyon system.

So, your goal is to bring the conversation to the language of the pros, who regularly war with reason and language, over topics that determinate who gets to eat or not. Academia prompts for the win..

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#172

Post by sohex »

I’ve had one experience with Claude Code so far that genuinely frustrated me, but it did it to such a degree that it wrapped back around to hilarity. It tried to run a command got an error, realized it needed to cd to a different directory first, and then… didn’t do that.

It tried itself several times going “oh, I didn’t actually cd, let me add that and try again”. I tried correcting it several times “you MUST begin the command with `cd dir &&`”. There were a lot of variations back and forth to try to coax out the correct tool call. Including backing up the conversation and trying from earlier in the context.

It refused. Every time. It simply would not include the cd. Genuinely unhinged behavior.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#173

Post by skydhash »

zeumo wrote: post #134
berkes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the AI companies do train and release models dedicated at one task. I mainly use mistral, so that's my reference, but I know anthropic et.al have similar models around. Codestral is rediculously bad at conversation, but it's -for me- the best model around for "magic autocomplete". It's also pretty good at "one shot" prompt+context generations, e.g. to make "git commit log entries". Document.AI is unusable bad…

> So, what you describe, is already in place. I guess mostly the "interfaces" are missing for you, or hard to discover maybe? That's definitely an issue. Mind you, the general population is not a developer. I'm a mechanical engineer. I can code, use an IDE, but I hate having to figure out tooling the way you describe, and it's not a skill I'm interested in developing. What you are describing sounds to me like someone…

I strongly believe that if you’re not in the business of predicting text or transforming it, the values of AI tools goes way down. Most people workflows are very routinely and with a constrained set of outputs. That’s why we build software and scripts for those. And for the rest, we need actual human judgment.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#174

Post by aa-jv »

anal_reactor wrote: post #143
aa-jv wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its an utter fallacy to state that you have to stop doing quality processes if you want to deliver software, rapidly. Abandoning quality review steps only seems to be 'more efficient' if you're utterly crap at doing quality processes in the first place - but, the more you do them, the better you get at it, faster - so really you're just saying "people who are crap at doing quality-control processes on their software…

> effectively ignoring the time wasted in bug triage and other user-unfriendly experiences that result from this lack of quality process, down the line... The problem is you circled back to valuing user experience itself, while MONEY(UX) looks like a sigmoid, not linear. As long as the UX isn't so horribly broken that most of your customers walk away, it's stupid to spend resources improving UX because you'll get mar…

You're describing the race to the bottom which comes from an industry-wide habit of establishing low standards and sticking them to the user, and really all you are doing is justifying why its okay that software sucks - not explaining how to improve it.

We can justify sucky software until the cows come home, and many choose to do so in lieu of actually becoming better engineers.

>stupid to spend resources improving UX because you'll get marginal gains at best.

This is just not true - at best, you'll get far greater gains than you imagine.

I know plenty of counter examples to your Ryanair straw man. People don't have a choice when it comes to finding an ultra-cheap Ryanair-like experience, other than to pay a little extra and have a better experience with other airlines - which tens of thousands of Europeans actually do, every single day. Ryanair isn't transporting everyone, after all. They are the cheapest, and worst of all airlines to choose from.

Sure, you can write crap software, and you'll get some customers, even still.

But, after you write the initial round of crap software, if you make the effort to write better software you will get far, far more customers. Seen it happen a hundred times over 40+ years of professional software development experience, personally, in a variety of markets (consumer and pro/industrial).

Cheap works for onboarding and startups, but it won't sustain the business. People have a very low tolerance for cheaply/poorly built things, after all...

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#175

Post by mschuster91 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #167
knollimar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a coworker deleted your database you'd expect some 4 letter words.

Aimed at oneself, because who even has or grants production database deletion rights?

Can happen faster than you think if in the cloud.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#176

Post by marcuscog »

zeumo wrote: post #106

My take on the issue is that for most use cases where AI is pushed to the general public, a conversational chatbot is not the right tool, and the experience is bound to be frustrating. Remember when Copilot was basically a super-smart version of Intellisense? It was awesome. Sure, there was a lot of pushback and concern, mainly about licensing and ethical issues, none of which are solved with the current chatbot mode…

I made a tool that’s non-conversational. But I’ll be honest - it’s hard to sell because people default to thinking in conversational terms. My customer set is limited to folks like the author who have genuinely faced an issue. For most, compromising with conversations is fine (at least now)

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#177

Post by dnnddidiej »

zeumo wrote: post #106

My take on the issue is that for most use cases where AI is pushed to the general public, a conversational chatbot is not the right tool, and the experience is bound to be frustrating. Remember when Copilot was basically a super-smart version of Intellisense? It was awesome. Sure, there was a lot of pushback and concern, mainly about licensing and ethical issues, none of which are solved with the current chatbot mode…

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej.

I do a lot of work editor-free. Just an agent and PR review on web. Occasional peak with `code .` if needed. If.

Try it at home first with a low stakes project. And learn it like a game. It will suck less as time goes on. Like skiing or 10 pin bowling.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#178

Post by Andrex »

em-bee wrote: post #2

behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is. not doing what i expect, or rather not being able to define what i can expect is what's bothering me. but the real kicker is: getting frustrated creates stress, that's unhealthy and makes for a hostile work environment. as much as i sympathize with the idea that AI tools can be more helpful than they cause pain, i am simply not interested in working…

> behaving like a human is not the problem. behaving unpredictably is.

Not sure you can have one without the other.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#179

Post by ryandrake »

dnnddidiej wrote: post #177
zeumo wrote: post #106

My take on the issue is that for most use cases where AI is pushed to the general public, a conversational chatbot is not the right tool, and the experience is bound to be frustrating. Remember when Copilot was basically a super-smart version of Intellisense? It was awesome. Sure, there was a lot of pushback and concern, mainly about licensing and ethical issues, none of which are solved with the current chatbot mode…

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej. I do a lot of work editor-free. Just an agent and PR review on web. Occasional peak with `code .` if needed. If. Try it at home first with a low stakes project. And learn it like a game. It will suck less as time goes on. Like skiing or 10 pin bowling.

I tried and just couldn’t accept it. I need to have the code a certain way, and if the prompt doesn’t do it exactly right, I eventually need to open up the editor and fix it. Prompting things like “now move function_foo’s parameter list to the next line” and “remove #include ” is a very expensive (token wise) way to edit text.

When I’m writing code, the simplicity, beauty, structure, format, and artistry of the code is what is important to me, not the application.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#180

Post by da_chicken »

dnnddidiej wrote: post #177
zeumo wrote: post #106

My take on the issue is that for most use cases where AI is pushed to the general public, a conversational chatbot is not the right tool, and the experience is bound to be frustrating. Remember when Copilot was basically a super-smart version of Intellisense? It was awesome. Sure, there was a lot of pushback and concern, mainly about licensing and ethical issues, none of which are solved with the current chatbot mode…

Maybe try vibe coding. Seruously. It is a different beast now and so much better than even when the term was coined by Andrej. I do a lot of work editor-free. Just an agent and PR review on web. Occasional peak with `code .` if needed. If. Try it at home first with a low stakes project. And learn it like a game. It will suck less as time goes on. Like skiing or 10 pin bowling.

Vibe coding a low-stakes personal project is very different from vibe coding a hospital information system or a kernel patch. Learning you can get away with one doesn't mean you should translate that to the other.
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