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I can convey in speech in 8 hours what would take you a week to type. Writing code is low level plebian work. I can convey thousands of lines of functions in a

I can convey in speech in 8 hours what would take you a week to type. Writing code is low level plebian work. I can convey thousands of lines of functions in a handful of sentences of plain English describing a task or complex high level function.

cheald 4y ago
You can describe what the input and output of a function should be, but unless you can describe the mechanism by which one turns into the other, you aren't communicating what code does. This is the disconnect between programmers and non-programmers; people operate at a level of abstraction that is fundamentally incompatible with computer software. Programming skill is about learning how to think about an abstract concept and realize it as a discrete concept, and try as we might we've been unable to come up with a way to get computers to intuit what we really mean when we speak in nonspecific terms. "Writing down code" is, perhaps, plebian work. Understanding a problem as expressed by humans and being able to connect that to the code to write, though, is where the real work is. Based on my experiences with ChatGPT and Copilot, AI isn't there yet. It's good at the plebian work, which is great, but it's hot garbage at the actually difficult thing.
luckylion 4y ago
> I can convey thousands of lines of functions in a handful of sentences of plain English describing a task or complex high level function. Amateur, I can do much better. "Build a search engine that's better than Google at everything". Voila, the AI will start spinning up and come back with a very large, very complex system, and all it took was ten words.
feoren 4y ago
> I can convey in speech in 8 hours what would take you a week to type. No, you can't. Your speech will not cover every edge case; it will not cover exactly how data flows through the system; it will not specify the appropriate data structures and algorithms to use; it will be full of holes and inconsistencies. How do I know this? Because if you could say it in English to that level, then you could simply type it in a programming language even more easily. Maybe it would take me a week to weed through your imprecise exposition to try to understand what you're actually trying to do, but it certainly does not take a week to type code; typing takes maybe 5% to 10% of my time. About 70% of my time is spent fleshing out the actual precise problem to solve, with the remaining 20% to 25% spent coming up with a good solution to that problem. Your 8-hour speech would not even precisely specify the problem you're trying to solve. > Writing code is low level plebian work. I can convey thousands of lines of functions in a handful of sentences of plain English describing a task or complex high level function. If a handful of plain-English sentences result in thousands of lines of code, either those plain-English sentences were unhelpful nonsense like "make me Facebook for dogs", or your code is massively over-complicated. Honestly what I'm hearing from you is "I don't know how to write code". That's OK. What's not OK is turning your nose up at those people who actually do. You sound like one of those fresh MBA "idea guys" who has a "billion dollar idea" and just need someone to type the code for you for a generous 20%. Just imagine someone saying "I could easily write a novel if I wanted to, but I'm not going to type it, because typing is for plebs. I'm an ideas man. I'll say what happens in the story, and I'll get some peon to actually type it into a novel." The person who says that is not "too good to be an author", they are a wannabe-author.
- gtvwill 4y ago
  I'm not sure why you think all that can't be done by AI. I'm not a coder or atleast I wouldn't call myself one. But yes I've done the whole write a funct in a few hundred lines then spend a thousand making sure it's used correctly. The thing is I don't see why ai couldn't do all that too. If it has decisions to be made that affect the outcome it can prompt me for input on them. Writing is slow. Not sure why I would bother with it tho if I can bang through the whole process by interacting at a concept/theory level instead. I look at AI like a new compiler. I mean I could write machine level assembly and if I was a wizard who knew it in and out I'm sure it would be super efficient. But we basically don't do that for 99% of cases, we write in some other language and we use a compiler. AI is like a compiler for my plain ass basic bish English to code. Might be a bit rough round the edges now but I'm sure it'll be suitable for the vast majority of coding in a very short amount of time.
- atom_arranger 4y ago
  I was with you until you said “make me Facebook for dogs”. I think a sufficiently pattern recognizing AI could probably make a somewhat useful/accurate application from that prompt, because most social media apps follow a set of patterns. Users (dogs) have certain attributes that go on their profile, they can share things with their friends, notifications should work. Where it gets tricky is the details, but maybe AI could get you a rough version at least by knowing social media app conventions. This is also how a motivated programmer would go about it, instead of asking the “idea person” a million questions they would just assume things. I say this as someone who has looked at AI generated code and was not impressed though, so this is probably still a long way off.
  - dangond 4y ago
    The real issue with prompting a la "Facebook for dogs" is how ridiculously underspecified such a prompt is. You see the problem with this very clearly in text to image models: you might have a specific idea of your dog in your head, but no matter how often you prompt "cute white Maltese dog with a tuft of fur across its eyes", you will never get something that would pass as your dog. (A more obvious challenge would be to try to generate an image of yourself if you are not a celebrity). The amount of words needed to replicate every detail exactly would amount to at least a short essay. You give an AI the prompt "Facebook for dogs" and it could take that in SO many different directions. Another problem that I'm personally more concerned about is that this way of coding will allow for so many security flaws to be built into the code. Even if it builds something that matches your expectations for the prompt, what's stopping it from generating something vulnerable to attacks that leak all your users' data? Humans already struggle enough with this, and we're feeding all our flawed codebases into these models.

cheald 4y ago

You can describe what the input and output of a function should be, but unless you can describe the mechanism by which one turns into the other, you aren't communicating what code does. This is the disconnect between programmers and non-programmers; people operate at a level of abstraction that is fundamentally incompatible with computer software. Programming skill is about learning how to think about an abstract concept and realize it as a discrete concept, and try as we might we've been unable to come up with a way to get computers to intuit what we really mean when we speak in nonspecific terms. "Writing down code" is, perhaps, plebian work. Understanding a problem as expressed by humans and being able to connect that to the code to write, though, is where the real work is. Based on my experiences with ChatGPT and Copilot, AI isn't there yet. It's good at the plebian work, which is great, but it's hot garbage at the actually difficult thing.

luckylion 4y ago

> I can convey thousands of lines of functions in a handful of sentences of plain English describing a task or complex high level function. Amateur, I can do much better. "Build a search engine that's better than Google at everything". Voila, the AI will start spinning up and come back with a very large, very complex system, and all it took was ten words.

feoren 4y ago

> I can convey in speech in 8 hours what would take you a week to type. No, you can't. Your speech will not cover every edge case; it will not cover exactly how data flows through the system; it will not specify the appropriate data structures and algorithms to use; it will be full of holes and inconsistencies. How do I know this? Because if you could say it in English to that level, then you could simply type it in a programming language even more easily. Maybe it would take me a week to weed through your imprecise exposition to try to understand what you're actually trying to do, but it certainly does not take a week to type code; typing takes maybe 5% to 10% of my time. About 70% of my time is spent fleshing out the actual precise problem to solve, with the remaining 20% to 25% spent coming up with a good solution to that problem. Your 8-hour speech would not even precisely specify the problem you're trying to solve. > Writing code is low level plebian work. I can convey thousands of lines of functions in a handful of sentences of plain English describing a task or complex high level function. If a handful of plain-English sentences result in thousands of lines of code, either those plain-English sentences were unhelpful nonsense like "make me Facebook for dogs", or your code is massively over-complicated. Honestly what I'm hearing from you is "I don't know how to write code". That's OK. What's not OK is turning your nose up at those people who actually do. You sound like one of those fresh MBA "idea guys" who has a "billion dollar idea" and just need someone to type the code for you for a generous 20%. Just imagine someone saying "I could easily write a novel if I wanted to, but I'm not going to type it, because typing is for plebs. I'm an ideas man. I'll say what happens in the story, and I'll get some peon to actually type it into a novel." The person who says that is not "too good to be an author", they are a wannabe-author.

gtvwill 4y ago
I'm not sure why you think all that can't be done by AI. I'm not a coder or atleast I wouldn't call myself one. But yes I've done the whole write a funct in a few hundred lines then spend a thousand making sure it's used correctly. The thing is I don't see why ai couldn't do all that too. If it has decisions to be made that affect the outcome it can prompt me for input on them. Writing is slow. Not sure why I would bother with it tho if I can bang through the whole process by interacting at a concept/theory level instead. I look at AI like a new compiler. I mean I could write machine level assembly and if I was a wizard who knew it in and out I'm sure it would be super efficient. But we basically don't do that for 99% of cases, we write in some other language and we use a compiler. AI is like a compiler for my plain ass basic bish English to code. Might be a bit rough round the edges now but I'm sure it'll be suitable for the vast majority of coding in a very short amount of time.
atom_arranger 4y ago
I was with you until you said “make me Facebook for dogs”. I think a sufficiently pattern recognizing AI could probably make a somewhat useful/accurate application from that prompt, because most social media apps follow a set of patterns. Users (dogs) have certain attributes that go on their profile, they can share things with their friends, notifications should work. Where it gets tricky is the details, but maybe AI could get you a rough version at least by knowing social media app conventions. This is also how a motivated programmer would go about it, instead of asking the “idea person” a million questions they would just assume things. I say this as someone who has looked at AI generated code and was not impressed though, so this is probably still a long way off.
- dangond 4y ago
  The real issue with prompting a la "Facebook for dogs" is how ridiculously underspecified such a prompt is. You see the problem with this very clearly in text to image models: you might have a specific idea of your dog in your head, but no matter how often you prompt "cute white Maltese dog with a tuft of fur across its eyes", you will never get something that would pass as your dog. (A more obvious challenge would be to try to generate an image of yourself if you are not a celebrity). The amount of words needed to replicate every detail exactly would amount to at least a short essay. You give an AI the prompt "Facebook for dogs" and it could take that in SO many different directions. Another problem that I'm personally more concerned about is that this way of coding will allow for so many security flaws to be built into the code. Even if it builds something that matches your expectations for the prompt, what's stopping it from generating something vulnerable to attacks that leak all your users' data? Humans already struggle enough with this, and we're feeding all our flawed codebases into these models.