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How to write stuff no one else can

thewritetoroam.com

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Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#71

Post by thejohnconway »

p1esk wrote: post #58
cycomanic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in my experience it more knows how to incorrectly apply existing concepts to incompatible areas and exert great confidence while doing it. I have just two recent examples where I thought it would be faster to use chatgpt instead of reading the manual. 1. How to asynchronously (e.g. asyncio) record from the microphone in python. Chatgpt gave me good which looked elegant, but didn't work. Well turns out pyaudio is…

When you say ChatGPT, do you mean 4 or 3.5?

4 does this, but I don’t think this it the show-stopper some people seem think it is. You can ask it to correct itself by feeding it the error messages. It’s like have a very knowledgeable, extremely fast programmer on call. Sometimes their guesses aren’t right first try — so what?

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#72

Post by scooke »

oldandtired wrote: post #62
snoman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you’re saying, and will echo that these systems are still just tools that enhance what we, as humans, are capable of doing. But I think you’re failing to consider that even comparatively simple systems can exhibit emergent behavior, well beyond their programming. You’re being unreasonably reductive and dismissive.

Emergent behaviour can occur, not a problem. But if you study such systems, I think you will find that the emergent behaviour is based on the programming involved and is not "beyond the programming". When it comes to intelligence, this is not something that we can say is actually emergent. There are currently a number of projects that are looking into intelligence and free-will. There are researchers on the same team…

I admire you for pressing home your point that others are missing. I practice a visual art form (which I won't name; many other smaller cultures around the world too have their own) which will never "emerge" from AI _unless_ it is programmed in, or trained on the visual art itself. Even though, I don't see how it could ever figure out the intricate detailed meanings without it being programmed. The people trying to counter you are thinking only within the culture within which these AIs have been created, and thus it does seem to them that anything AI creates is emergent because it seemingly created soemthing they haven't, didn't, couldn't, wouldn't. Without the programming (never mind the electricity), AI is still a blunt tool.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#73

Post by ephemeral-life »

austin-cheney wrote: post #64
munificent wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure all software developers have been exposed to strong personalities. Often in the form of bullies, primadonnas, class clowns, big men on campus, pointy haired bosses, etc. The problem is that—as a generalization—strong personality tends to correlate inversely with competence , and software engineers esteem the latter above all else (because a machine is not swayed by charisma, after all). Good leadership is re…

Competence at what? Avoiding strong personalities purely for the sake easing hostility sounds a lot like cowardice. A better course of action is conflict resolution.

> Competence at what?

There is a class of people who believe leadership is something you can learn on its own. These are the people who join all the useless commitees for resume building purposes. Leadership only has value when paired with significant knowledge in some domain.

> Avoiding strong personalities purely for the sake easing hostility sounds a lot like cowardice.

Cowardice is when you avoid something, because of fear. GP is talking about avoiding people who will annoy you.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#74

Post by p1esk »

thejohnconway wrote: post #71
p1esk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say ChatGPT, do you mean 4 or 3.5?

4 does this, but I don’t think this it the show-stopper some people seem think it is. You can ask it to correct itself by feeding it the error messages. It’s like have a very knowledgeable, extremely fast programmer on call. Sometimes their guesses aren’t right first try — so what?

Maybe. I just don’t like to confuse the two, it’s like talking to a middle schooler vs talking to a graduate student. In both cases you can say the experience sucked but you should specify which was it.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#75

Post by febeling »

edmundsauto wrote: post #56
Aurornis wrote: post #39

> For example, on LinkedIn, someone may say they were CMO of a company for just three months, and if you take that data at face value, you may think something very bad must have happened for a company to hire and lose such an important role in so short a time. > But when you look closer, you see that this person was a sophomore in college at the time, that the company was just a month old, and that actually, it wasn’…

This is funny because Facebook was famous for adopting this attitude early on. Hire people with potential instead of credentials. If you have a good perf review system and don’t mind false positives it can work. Maybe it worked better before boot camps.

What changed with boot camps?

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#76

Post by DavidPiper »

austin-cheney wrote: post #46
Aurornis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leadership is a concept largely foreign to the software industry Maybe in the companies you’ve worked for, but I haven’t found this to be true at all > An excellent software developer tends to score high in agreeability, but a strong leader knows how to turn that down to 0 for maximum confrontation and/or defiance Hard disagree. “Maximum confrontation and/or defiance” has never been a goal of good leaders who are t…

Leaders do more than build teams. Team building is inward looking. Real leaders are outward looking and have to be willing to defend their team(s) at personal cost.

This reads as a criticism of team building (maybe that wasn't your intent, but it was my first reading.)

Strong teams need a balance of transformational leadership, servant leadership, some laissez-fair management and some micromanagement (etc, etc).

I.e. situational leadership.

In my experience, given how many ANDs you need, the most successful teams have a combination of leadership styles and roles from different people at different times. Balancing leadership and responsibilities across people also allows the personal cost of such activities (whether it's emotional labour, political backlash, etc) to be distributed as well.

This, I also believe, is why co-foundership appears so often in stories of successful companies. You always end up with "the leader that is good at X despite Y", and there is always someone who can come in to provide "Y without necessarily X" in a way that makes their joint leadership work in ways that individually they would fail.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#80

Post by ildjarn »

febeling wrote: post #75
edmundsauto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is funny because Facebook was famous for adopting this attitude early on. Hire people with potential instead of credentials. If you have a good perf review system and don’t mind false positives it can work. Maybe it worked better before boot camps.

What changed with boot camps?

It’s the shift of perception from technology being “geek stuff” to a lucrative field on par with finance, medicine and law. Before, someone who knew a bit of programming was likely to be passionate and with high potential. Now they may still be, but also they may just a way to get rich quick.
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