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The user is visibly frustrated

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Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#181

Post by ryandrake »

streetfighter64 wrote: post #120
antonvs wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see them say anything about dignity. They said using Windows makes them angry, which is understandable. That speaks to a poor user experience design. Framing it as a privilege issue is blaming the victim.

"The victim" of using a certain operating system? Please. Being lucky enough to work in a comfortable air-conditioned office, AND having the luxury of declining jobs sorely because the operating system makes you angry, is the height of privilege. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and realize how good you have it. > I didn't see them say anything about dignity. The word dignity was used twice in the comment I replied…

I wouldn’t put it in terms of dignity or victimhood, but Windows definitely feels weird and foreign if you are dumped into it after using Macs and Linux and bash for 20 years. I had to help someone do a little maintenance on a Windows system the other day and I realized that I had basically forgotten how to do anything on it. I couldn’t even remember how to delete a directory tree. Online tutorials recommended to do some things in “Powershell” whatever the hell that is, and that was even more bizarre. I’ve never felt more useless in front of a computer than I did just trying to remove and install some software from the Windows command line.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#182

Post by GuB-42 »

From my experience, if a LLM starts repeating itself, it means it has given you everything it could, if you get anything new, it will most likely be a hallucination.

So consider these frustrating interactions as the LLM way of saying "I don't know".

You may be able to squeeze a bit more information if you insist but to me, the risk of hallucination is just too high to be worth it.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#183

Post by ryandrake »

marcuscog wrote: post #176
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)

Yea, it really depends on your mode of thinking. Might be why a lot of people struggle with LLM coding while others think it’s great and are productive.

When I’m writing code I think in terms of data structures and algorithms. I have the idea fully formed in my head and coding becomes a mere typing exercise.

If I have to use a chatbot instead, now I have to do the awkward exercise of translating that code into English text that the chatbot can understand, just so the LLM can convert it back to code. And always a lot is lost in that translation.

What is useful are things that speed up data entry, autocorrect formatting, and linting things I forget and so on. Not some awkward thing that makes me round-trip to English as an extra step.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#184

Post by dse1982 »

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…

Amen. Chatbots are a band-aid on broken UX. Trying to explain this for a while at the company I work at, but everybody is drunk on the kool-aid. But I get it: good UX takes deep thought and creativity. Tacking on a chatbot does not.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#185

Post by eithed »

notnaut wrote: post #161
eithed wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will not work - you end up with Claude being ADHD and not following any guidelines. Skills do work, as they ground the agent with constrained context for the task it's performing

Can you explain how you’d use skills to address the situation that anonzzzies was describing…?

I have a skill for exactly such case! Here's an excerpt :)

``` --- name: evidence-debugging description: > Use when debugging any failing test or bug, investigating unexpected behavior, or tracing the cause of a reported defect. ---

# Debugging Discipline

## When to Use

- A test is failing and you need to understand why - Behavior is unexpected and the cause is unknown - The user asks you to debug or investigate a defect - You need to verify what a value actually is at runtime

*When NOT to use:* proactive code exploration without a specific failure to investigate.

## STOP — Do This Before Anything Else

Before reading code, before forming a hypothesis, before typing anything — answer these:

1. *Do I have actual output from a running system?* - No → instrument, run, save to file, read. Do not proceed until you have real output. - Yes → read it. Do not re-run.

2. *Am I about to explain what the issue "probably is" or "must be"?* - Yes → stop. That is deduction without evidence. It is a violation. Instrument instead.

3. *Am I about to touch passing code?* - Yes → stop. Only instrument the failing scope.

If you find yourself already reasoning about likely causes — you are already violating Rule 1. Stop. Go back to step 1. ```

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#186

Post by randusername »

apsurd wrote: post #27

Working with LLMs is great for building communication skills. Communicating effectively is one of the hardest skills and it's baked into everything we do as humans. I'd say as a matter of principle: blame it on a communication failure on your end vs blaming the stupid LLM since you're the only one that can do anything about it. So I don't think it's a matter of form; whether the AI should or shouldn't act like a huma…

More specifically it is about efficiently conveying outside context. The 4 horsemen of AI dismissal:

1. Slow typist

2. Terse communicator / ambiguous "it" "that" "this"

3. Assumes conversation partners share their reality and headspace

4. Mental blocks with delegation, even to competent humans

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#187

Post by scotty79 »

contrast wrote: post #159
scotty79 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you communicate perfectly, there's no guarantee that the LLM will "behave as instructed" and as you imagined it to. Indeed, the frustration often comes from the fact that you've said something as clear as day, yet the agent takes another path. People forget. People misunderstand clear things. Teach yourself to not judge people for being human. You'll have easier time with AI. You are not gonna be angry at 5…

"Teach yourself to not judge people for being human." "Be a more charitable, generous, understanding person." Anyone making such blatantly judgemental and egotistical comments to a complete stranger has absolutely no idea what is frustrating to people. And is not being anything like a charitable or understanding person.

Thank you for illustrating perfectly, the mindset that gets you worst possible results from AI. I'm, in your opinion, wrong and you chose to react with indignant fury. What kind of result will that get you?

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#188

Post by m0llusk »

This is the cost of not allowing this technology to be organically introduced and spread. By ramming generative LLMs at everyone and linking usage with job qualifications and performance issues like this have been sidelined along with the increasing costs and unknown liabilities from rampant intellectual property theft. And as long as capital is in command and even senior contributors are nothing more than chips at a gambling table this will continue.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#189

Post by anal_reactor »

aa-jv wrote: post #174
anal_reactor wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 U…

> I know plenty of counter examples to your Ryanair straw man

Then name them lol

I think you simply don't understand how many poor people there are and how much money can be earned by simply offering the cheapest product. People are not going to buy your premium software if they don't have money for luxury products, simple as that.

Re: The user is visibly frustrated

#190

Post by rpcope1 »

aa-jv wrote: post #77
rpcope1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been one of the gravest re-realizations I've noticed watching coworkers trying to pick up "agentic" coding: they often just break down into "just fix it" or "why is this broke". I've noticed that even though supposedly there's training or some sort of work done to make the agent work better with unclear or ambiguous grammar or bad structure, it feels like the quality changes palpably when you talk in clear wel…

Agreed, 100%. If you cannot formulate a specification, or describe a requirement - or indeed, if you cannot fathom the difference between a spec and a requirement, and why its needed to differentiate these from each other prior to doing a proper design and implementation - then you're going to carry your bad practice into the AI realm and that AI is going to be a force multiplier of your own bad practice. Because you…

I am maybe positing something even stronger: say you had two prompts, both with the same information, one was written in the style of a good paper out of Nature or Science, one written in the style of a bad Twitter post or other kind of mess, even with the same information, I increasingly believe even for the top end models like Opus, the results are at least materially different if not grossly so. I really believe the stronger English input yields demonstrably better outcomes, even if the information contained inside is the same.
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