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Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

tylerglaiel.substack.com

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Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#551

Post by ummonk »

I use it to reduce the drudgery of writing code like this. I've found I have to do a lot of hand-holding in terms of telling it what data structures and logic it should use. I also just directly tell it what changes it needs to make to fix big bugs or logic errors I spot. That gets it to the point that I can tweak it myself and complete the code.

One of the frustrating things is that it doesn't ask for clarification of something that's unclear - it just makes an assumption. Really demonstrates why software engineering interviews emphasize the candidate asking clarifying questions.

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#552

Post by hackandthink »

Maybe LLM Code writing will us slow down (initially). Productivity is hard to measure and can be counter intuitive.

Talking the whole time with your LLM may distract more than it helps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#553

Post by dimitrios1 »

coldtea wrote: post #431
dimitrios1 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just adore the hubris on full display here to say what one of the world's best computer science educators has to say is irrelevant.

First, this is an argument by authority. One of the "world's best computer science educators" can still say all kinds of wrong stuff. Especially someone as opinionated as Dijkstra, with many controversial opinions other world leading computer science educators disagree with. Second, relevance and applicability is depending on context. On the context of this discussion, about practical programming in the trenches, wha…

This is an argument of "challenging those who have the hubris to think Harold's statement is irrelevant to stop thinking small minded", if I were to call it anything.

Additionally, even if I concede it is an argument solely on authority, just because an argument contains a fallacious point doesn't make it untrue, otherwise that would be the fallacy fallacy.

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#554

Post by 908B64B197 »

IKLOL wrote: post #229
quitit wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so common in many types of business, and usually a very difficult point to articulate so thank you for that. It's something to be shown to those ringing the death-knell for programmers, artists, and the like. Those death-knell types seemingly aren't aware of what day to day operations looks like and how AI makes a great tool, but doesn't necessarily deal with the very human factors of whims, uncertainty, reac…

I think the fear should be less about AI taking 100% of jobs but it should be AI making a single programmer do the job of 5, which would wipe a majority of the market out and make it a non-viable career option for most. Companies are already bloated, imagine when they realize one overworked highly paid senior can replace 10 juniors.

This was already the case 10 years ago.

Except, there was no AI, but an alternative called an offshored development center. You would send your spec and design document and get, via email or FTP if they were really cutting-edge a number of files that would sometime compile and even, according to the legends, actually work. The way this tech worked is that you generally had to wait overnight for your spec to "mature" into code.

Some places figured out they could hire local engineers for about 5-10x what they paid for this "offshored development center" tech and get better results.

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#555

Post by TylerGlaiel »

mannykannot wrote: post #428
scg wrote: post #19

As a human programmer I didn't quite understand the problem statement until I read the whole article and the tests. I believe the goal is to find a path with the fewest possible "fire" cells and the minimum cost as a tie breaker. The cost of a path is the sum of its cells' cost and it can't be greater than 5. If I understood the assignment correctly, I don't think the problem statement is equivalent to what's include…

Note that water tiles have cost 2, so the tile-crossing limit cannot be expressed simply as a maximum total cost. Looking at the two examples in the paragraph after "And there’s a lot of complication to it beyond the simple cases too", I can't figure out how the movement value is defined, as I can only see 10 and 8 moves respectively, not the 14 and 10 movement value claimed in the following text (and only one water…

it had 4 movement as its base, the numbers over its head were a bonus movement status effect (used for testing this stuff)

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#556

Post by marstall »

ummonk wrote: post #551

I use it to reduce the drudgery of writing code like this. I've found I have to do a lot of hand-holding in terms of telling it what data structures and logic it should use. I also just directly tell it what changes it needs to make to fix big bugs or logic errors I spot. That gets it to the point that I can tweak it myself and complete the code. One of the frustrating things is that it doesn't ask for clarification…

I've wondered why got doesn't ask questions - that's a basic expert skill.

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#557

Post by TylerGlaiel »

tinco wrote: post #181
scg wrote: post #19

As a human programmer I didn't quite understand the problem statement until I read the whole article and the tests. I believe the goal is to find a path with the fewest possible "fire" cells and the minimum cost as a tie breaker. The cost of a path is the sum of its cells' cost and it can't be greater than 5. If I understood the assignment correctly, I don't think the problem statement is equivalent to what's include…

By the time you've formulated the problem as: "Give me the shortest route with a cost of 5 or lower that doesn't go through fire, and if that doesn't exist, the shortest route with a cost or 5 or lower that goes through fire." Then you've basically formulated the algorithm as well. That's also precisely where one of the programmer's greatest challenges lies, to carefully translate and delineate the problem. I agree i…

thats also not a correct formulation of the problem, as it needs to minimize the number of fire tiles it passes through. which is where a lot of the complication comes from.

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#558

Post by wankle »

When business A's lightly technical aware AI operator asks their AI for a solution to push payment information to a bank B and describes it, and A's AI talks to the bank's AI and they coordinate the creation of the API then A's and B's AI talks to their respective production counterpart AI's and they create the implementation and put it into production; I feel we programmers will mostly be obsolete.

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#559

Post by dgacmu »

lolinder wrote: post #542
dgacmu wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a computer science educator, it's worth remembering that Dijkstra was incredibly full of himself and his specific formal view of the field. There are large parts of computer science that have nothing to do with the machine and there are other parts that do. There's no single cut and dried answer here, we're a pretty diverse field that spans everything from mathematics to engineering to a touch of art and human fac…

What you say about Dijkstra is true, but we're not actually talking about a Dijkstra quote here, we're talking about Harold Abelson. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abelson

I think we all started replying to a sibling comment that quoted from Dijkstra and we got it threaded wrong.

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes” - Edsger Dijkstra

Re: Testing GPT 4's code-writing capabilities with some real world problems

#560

Post by [deleted] »

danwee wrote: post #183

I want to see GPT-4 dealing with this situation: - they: we need a new basic POST endpoint - us: cool, what does the api contract look like? URL? Query params? Payload? Response? Status code? - they: Not sure. Third-party company XXQ will let you know the details. They will be the ones calling this new endpoint. But in essence it should be very simple: just grab whatever they pass and save it in our db - us: ok, cool…

[deleted]
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