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Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

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Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#411

Post by charlieyu1 »

kokanee wrote: post #93
croes wrote: post #5

Natural language isn’t made to be precise that’s why we use a subset in programming languages. So you either need lots of extra text to remove the ambiguity of natural language if you use AI or you need a special precise subset to communicate with AI and that’s just programming with extra steps.

> or you need a special precise subset to communicate with AI haha, I just imagined sending TypeScript to ChatGPT and having it spit my TypeScript back to me. "See guys, if you just use Turing-complete logically unambiguous input, you get perfect output!"

I guess we could have LLM to translate natural language to some precise subset, get it processed, then translate the output back to natural language

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#412

Post by alickz »

frizlab wrote: post #406
alickz wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience, if you can't explain something to someone else then you don't fully understand it our brains like to jump over inconsistencies or small gaps in our logic when working by themselves, but try to explain that same concept to someone else and those inconsistencies and gaps become glaringly obvious (doubly so if the other person starts asking questions you never considered) it's why pair programming and…

Or maybe your in the process of building it and that’s why you cannot understand it: it does not exist yet.

should you build something you don't understand?

it would seem to me that would cause a lot of issues

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#413

Post by balp »

skue wrote: post #390
yarekt wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a mechanical way of describing pair programming. I'm guessing you don't do it often (understandable if its not working for you). For me pair programming accelerates development to much more than 2x. Over time the two of you figure out how to use each other's strengths, and as both of you immerse yourself in the same context you begin to understand what's needed without speaking every bit of syntax between…

> I'm guessing you don't do it often (understandable if its not working for you). For me pair programming accelerates development to much more than 2x. The value of pair programming is inversely proportional to the expertise of the participant. Junior devs who pair with senior devs get a lot out of it, senior devs not so much. GP is probably a more experienced dev, whereas you are the type of dev who says things like…

As a senior dev, when pairing with junious I get a more skilled team. Then I can continue to give new teams the skill and we all grow as people and companies.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#414

Post by 9rx »

kmoser wrote: post #394
9rx wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> complex applications can be fully specified in English Of course. We established that at the beginning. The entire discussion is about exactly that. It was confirmed again in the previous comment. However, that is not natural. I expect most native English speakers would be entirely incapable of fully specifying a complex application or anything else of similar complexity. That is not natural use. While the words, b…

> I expect most native English speakers would be entirely incapable of fully specifying a complex application or anything else of similar complexity. Your original postulation was that it simply wasn't possible, implying nobody could do it. The fact that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to do it doesn't mean nobody can do it. I agree that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to write a reasonabl…

> Your original postulation was that it simply wasn't possible, implying nobody could do it.

Then you must have mistakenly replied to the wrong comment, I guess? My original comment, and every one that followed, postulated that so-called "careful use of English", as in what you are talking about and what we have always been talking about, is a programming language. Given that it is a programming language, how could it not be used in that way? That's what programming languages do best.

> The fact that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to do it doesn't mean nobody can do it.

Of course. But the fact that most native English speakers wouldn't be able to do it proves that it is isn't natural language. This "technical English" language may resemble the natural language also known as English in many ways, but, as even you pointed out earlier, it is not the same language.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#415

Post by cratermoon »

Is chat a good UI for anything besides, well, chatting between people? Joseph Weizenbaum chose a chat interface for ELIZA because he expressly wanted to ape Rogerian therapy. Are we doomed to imagine AI is "chatting with a computer" because no one can imagine anything else?

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#416

Post by kybernetikos »

skue wrote: post #390
yarekt wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a mechanical way of describing pair programming. I'm guessing you don't do it often (understandable if its not working for you). For me pair programming accelerates development to much more than 2x. Over time the two of you figure out how to use each other's strengths, and as both of you immerse yourself in the same context you begin to understand what's needed without speaking every bit of syntax between…

> I'm guessing you don't do it often (understandable if its not working for you). For me pair programming accelerates development to much more than 2x. The value of pair programming is inversely proportional to the expertise of the participant. Junior devs who pair with senior devs get a lot out of it, senior devs not so much. GP is probably a more experienced dev, whereas you are the type of dev who says things like…

I don't agree with this at all. Pairing where there's a big skill gap isn't proper pairing, it's more like mentoring or hands on training.

In pair programming as I learned it and as I have occasionally experienced it, two individuals challenge each other to be their best selves while also handing off tasks that break flow so that the pair as a whole is in constant flow. When it works this is a fantastic, productive, intense experience. I would agree that it is more than 2x as productive. I don't believe it's possible to achieve this state at all with a mismatched pair.

If this is the experience people have in mind, then it's not surprising that they think that those who think it's only for training juniors haven't actually tried it very much.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#417

Post by frizlab »

alickz wrote: post #412
frizlab wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe your in the process of building it and that’s why you cannot understand it: it does not exist yet.

should you build something you don't understand? it would seem to me that would cause a lot of issues

So you should never build anything new? We should not use AI either, nobody truly understands how it works currently, it should not even have been built!

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#418

Post by badsectoracula »

tpmoney wrote: post #346
badsectoracula wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Specifically I’m thinking of AI image generation I heavily disagree here, chat - or really text - is a horrible UI for image generation, unless you have almost zero idea of what you want to achieve and you don't really care about the final results. Typing "make the bar a bit more like a fizzbuzz" in some textbox is awful UX compared to, say, clicking on the "bar" and selecting "fizzbuzz" or drag-and-dropping "fizzb…

> Typing "make the bar a bit more like a fizzbuzz" in some textbox is awful UX compared to, say, clicking on the "bar" and selecting "fizzbuzz" or drag-and-dropping "fizzbuzz" on the "bar" or really anything that takes advantage of the fact we're interacting with a graphical environment to do work on graphics. That assumes that you have a UX capable of determining what you're clicking on in the generated image (which…

Yes, you'd need something that is more involved than a textbox, but this is/can be part of AI research too: computer vision is a very old topic in AI research after all.

About how the exact UI will be for multiple objects, this is something that multiple professional tools - like 3D engines or editors - already do. A common solution (aside from the multiple click you mentioned) is to use a modifier key like Alt+click to show a list of the items under the mouse. An AI system could also show alternative interpretations of what is clicked.

> Again, I'm not arguing the chat interface should be the only interface.

The main issue here is that current AIs are trained using chat-like interactivity at their core with everything else being a "wrapper" around the chat parts, when it should be the other way around.

Re: Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

#419

Post by dkkergoog »

yarekt wrote: post #277
ryandrake wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the things I don't like about Chat are the same things I don't like about pair (or team) programming. I've always thought of programming as a solitary activity. You visualize the data structures, algorithms, data paths, calling flow and stack, and so on, in your mind, with very high throughput "discussions" happening entirely in your brain. Your brain is high bandwidth, low latency. Effortlessly and instantly…

That's such a mechanical way of describing pair programming. I'm guessing you don't do it often (understandable if its not working for you). For me pair programming accelerates development to much more than 2x. Over time the two of you figure out how to use each other's strengths, and as both of you immerse yourself in the same context you begin to understand what's needed without speaking every bit of syntax between…

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