this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] swlabr@awful.systems 35 points 1 month ago (3 children)

have they tried writing better prompts? my lived experience says that because it works for me, it should work as long as you write good prompts. prompts prompts prompts. I am very smart. /s

[–] luciole@beehaw.org 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Oh wow. The article says basically that but without the /s and then it gets even better. This is according to Mister AI Professor Ethan Mollick From The University Of Warthon and the link goes to a tweet (the highest form of academia) saying:

The problem with calling “prompt engineering” a form of programming is that it isn’t like what we call coding

In fact, coders are often bad at prompting because AI doesn’t do things consistently or work like code. The best prompters I know can’t code at all. They “teach” the AI.

Which is just great considering the next excuse in the text is:

this is due to insufficient reviews, either because the company has not implemented robust code quality and code-review practices, or because developers are scrutinising AI-written code less than they would scrutinise their own code

So who the fuck even reviews the prompt engineers’ code sludge, Mister AI Professor Of Twitter?

Whole text is such a sad cope.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

developers are scrutinising AI-written code less than they would scrutinise their own code

Wait, is this how Those People claim that Copilot actually "improved their productivity"? They just don't fucking read what the machine output?

I was always like "how can Copilot make me code faster if all it does is give me bad code to review which takes more than just writing it" and the answer is "what do you mean review"????

Wait, is this how Those People claim that Copilot actually “improved their productivity”? They just don’t fucking read what the machine output?

Yes, that's exactly what it is. That and boilerplate, but it probably makes all kinds of errors that they don't noticed, because the build didn't fail.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Programmers hate programming and love code reviewing, right? Right?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Soon they will try to fix this problem by having 2 forms of LLM do team coding. The surprised Pikachu faces will be something

Looking forward to the LLM vs LLM PRs with hundreds of back and forth commit-request changes-commit cycles. Most of it just flipping a field between final and not final.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I didn't even read the article. Still believe in the prompts.

[–] pikesley@mastodon.me.uk 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@swlabr @jaschop

I fixed the quote from the article "programmers are not known for being great at writing prompts because many of us find the whole idea offensive and stupid"

I'm reminded of the guy in a previous thread who claimed LLMs helped him as a rubber duck partner. You know - the troubleshooting technique named for its efficacy when working with a bath toy.

[–] regrub@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Prompt engineering is the same as software engineering, right?

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Someone will have the "brilliant" idea to fix this by having chatbots review code in 5... 4... 3...

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago

Welcome to my new startup where we train LLMs on compiled binaries. Now you can just prompt and get a complete executable, no coding knowledge needed. We value our company at $5b, product launch date indeterminate

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I could swear I’ve seen a shartup with this pitch

will try check tomorrow, rn I’m enjoying the sounds of the first thunderstorm of the season

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Thanks now you've sent me down the rabbit hole since I searched for this and clicked on the first ad: coderabbit.ai

One of the code reviews they feature on their homepage involves poor CodeRabbit misspelling a variable name, and then suggesting the exact opposite code of what would be correct for a "null check" (Suggesting if (object.field) return; when it should have suggested if (!object.field) return; or something like that).

You'd think AI companies would have wised up by this point and gone through all their pre-recorded demos with a fine comb so that ~~marks~~ users at least make it past the homepage, but I guess not.

Aside: It's not really accurate to describe if (object.field) as a null check in JS since other things like empty strings will fail the check, but maybe CodeRabbit is just an adorable baby JS reviewer!

Aside: the example was in a .jsx file. Does that stand for JavaScript XML? because oh lord that sounds cursed

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

You’d think AI companies would have wised up by this point and gone through all their pre-recorded demos with a fine comb so that ~~marks~~ users at least make it past the homepage, but I guess not.

The target group for their pitch probably isn't people who have a solid grasp of coding, I'd bet quite the opposite.

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

JSX is JavaScript, but you can also just put HTML in it (with bonus syntax for embedding more JS expressions inside) and it can get transpiled into function calls, which means it'll result in an object structure representing the HTML you wrote. It's used so that you can write a component as a function that returns HTML with properties already computed in and any special properties, like event listeners, passed as function references contained in the structure.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago

that's a hell of a lot of words for "is a giant pile of mistakes"

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

sorry, the reality is worse

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

why do so many awful tech companies have rabbit in their names

Because rabbits are cute and fluffy and good and it is the solemn mission of all terrible tech companies to take the things you love and make you associate them with useless AI products.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 20 points 1 month ago

"When asked about buggy AI [code], a common refrain is ‘it is not my code,’ meaning they feel less accountable because they didn’t write it.”

Strong they cut all my deadlines in half and gave me an OpenAI API key, so fuck it energy.

He stressed that this is not from want of care on the developer’s part but rather a lack of interest in “copy-editing code” on top of quality control processes being unprepared for the speed of AI adoption.

You don't say.

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 11 points 1 month ago

For some reason when I read this I am reminded of our "highly efficient rail" which often derails

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 8 points 1 month ago

LLMs will save us from having to work on features now that we nearly ironed out all the issues introduced by Kubernetes.

[–] n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Buahahahaha, lazy fucks just do the work

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago

as I have said here some time ago, these chucklefucks are a goldmine waiting to happen. just not the kind of gold they think.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

"i don't know what happened, the truck was cruising just fine when we put the toddler on the wheel"