6 ms·

I have the same feeling, people are very concentrated on the ability of this AI generators to create working code from super specific and well formed prompts. W

by guax 4y ago

I have the same feeling, people are very concentrated on the ability of this AI generators to create working code from super specific and well formed prompts. When in reality, figuring out what the prompt should be accounts for 80% of the job.

anonyfox 4y ago
don't fall into this mental trap. you can get into recursion quite easily here, and figuring out what to prompt can start from simple general questions - and there is no need for a developer at all, aside from the current limitations of copy/paste/run workflow has to be done manually
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Have you ever worked at a software firm of greater than say 30 people? Doesn’t resonate with my experience at all, and the 30+ people are there not just to write code.
- caleb-allen 4y ago
  It's astonishing to see the goalposts move so quickly. The cope of "well, okay, it can do that, but that's not even the hard part!" when just a year ago this entire product was almost unimaginable.
  - Jevon23 4y ago
    I don’t think anyone is claiming to not be impressed. Yes, we’re all impressed. This was unimaginable sci-fi just 5 years ago. You did it, we’re impressed! You won. The next step after that is for people to figure out how to justify their continued relevance. I think that’s a pretty natural reaction.
    - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      I’m not concerned. If AI replaces my job then ok I’ll find something else to do. Self driving cars seem to have stagnated so maybe I’ll be an Uber driver
      - chpatrick 4y ago
        I wouldn't count on that, you can call a self driving taxi right now in Phoenix.
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    I'm impressed. But I want it to be better, so I don't have to spend so much time coding and can trust it to give me good code so I can offload a lot of my efforts on to it. Right now I have to check and verify or go back and forth with prompts so much I almost would have been better off writing the damn code in the first place. Meanwhile I've got a backlog of about 100 personal projects I've never gotten around to making (especially creating digital versions of my board game designs, of which I have about 70 at this point) that I just haven't had the energy to work on myself, that I'd love to be able to just upload the rules document for it and get some sort of working game spit out the other end, or at least a good chunk of it, and I can take it from there. And then I can test a new rule by just rewriting the rules document, as opposed to having to manually code every rule change into the game. I don't think I'd run out of things for it to make if it was as good at complex software generation as A.I. is right now with art generation.
    - yw3410 4y ago
      Do you find AI to be good with art generation? I can't use any of the art in the projects that I do without extensive inefficient editing since the stuff it spits out isn't how a human would draw. It's good for concept browsing, but not much more for me at the moment.
      - cableshaft 4y ago
        I haven't messed with it much since I find the process for the 'good one' (Midjourney) annoying (go onto a Discord channel, type your request in public for a bunch of people, wait a while, hunt for it amongs the long channel of requests, etc). I'm assuming the process has gotten better since, but I don't know. I'm mostly just using free vector art and simple colors/shapes or whatever simple things I can make in Blender for my art still, in part because there's such a backlash against using any A.I. art right now. Most of it is judging by what people have been saying in groups online. Some people have found it very useful and use it extensively, like for their board game art. It doesn't even have to get 100% of the way there (for coding games based on rulesets). Even 75% would probably save me a lot of time and allow me to find the energy to close the gap as opposed to not even starting since I have so many other projects going on.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    The realization that software development is only maybe 5% coding came way before GPT. > The cope of Whenever I see someone use 'cope' that way, I immediately think they're making a bad faith argument. Is that intentional?
  - alfalfasprout 4y ago
    The goalposts haven't really moved though? The reality that a lot of people have thrown "engineer" in their title but just write code given a spec or tightly scoped requirements or design has been true for a while now. But for quite a few folks, the coding is the easy part. When building larger systems you're not even that often implementing things from scratch. The decision making, dealing with existing tech debt, tooling, etc. is the hard part. Ambiguity is the hard part and it's always been that way. Don't get me wrong GPT-* is impressive. Heck, I pay for a subscription. But it won't really make a lot of folks at my company notably more productive.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  The raison d'être of COBOL (now Cobol) in the 1950s was that "there is no need for a developer at all". Managers can produce their own reports. How did that turn out? A whole profession was created. The thing that comes closest to "no developer needed" is Excel. But you really need someone who knows programming if you want a reliable, robust product, even in Excel.
- throwaway38290 4y ago
  Everyone's focused on writing code - is the code even needed when a good enough AI exists? How many of us are writing code to extract 10% more efficiency out of humans, if they go so do we. Also if software development does survive, it's going to look very attractive to all the other unemployed people.
  - anonyfox 4y ago
    i think currently those 6-figure salaries are looking great for like most of humanity - I don't expect seismic shifts here. but there is a funny mechanic at play certainly: once some dev work gets cheap as a commodity, demand surges suddenly since at a low enough price point and availability everyone wants to have some need solved that made no financial sense before.

by guax 4y ago

anonyfox 4y ago

don't fall into this mental trap. you can get into recursion quite easily here, and figuring out what to prompt can start from simple general questions - and there is no need for a developer at all, aside from the current limitations of copy/paste/run workflow has to be done manually

ethanbond 4y ago
Have you ever worked at a software firm of greater than say 30 people? Doesn’t resonate with my experience at all, and the 30+ people are there not just to write code.
caleb-allen 4y ago
It's astonishing to see the goalposts move so quickly. The cope of "well, okay, it can do that, but that's not even the hard part!" when just a year ago this entire product was almost unimaginable.
- Jevon23 4y ago
  I don’t think anyone is claiming to not be impressed. Yes, we’re all impressed. This was unimaginable sci-fi just 5 years ago. You did it, we’re impressed! You won. The next step after that is for people to figure out how to justify their continued relevance. I think that’s a pretty natural reaction.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    I’m not concerned. If AI replaces my job then ok I’ll find something else to do. Self driving cars seem to have stagnated so maybe I’ll be an Uber driver
    - chpatrick 4y ago
      I wouldn't count on that, you can call a self driving taxi right now in Phoenix.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  I'm impressed. But I want it to be better, so I don't have to spend so much time coding and can trust it to give me good code so I can offload a lot of my efforts on to it. Right now I have to check and verify or go back and forth with prompts so much I almost would have been better off writing the damn code in the first place. Meanwhile I've got a backlog of about 100 personal projects I've never gotten around to making (especially creating digital versions of my board game designs, of which I have about 70 at this point) that I just haven't had the energy to work on myself, that I'd love to be able to just upload the rules document for it and get some sort of working game spit out the other end, or at least a good chunk of it, and I can take it from there. And then I can test a new rule by just rewriting the rules document, as opposed to having to manually code every rule change into the game. I don't think I'd run out of things for it to make if it was as good at complex software generation as A.I. is right now with art generation.
  - yw3410 4y ago
    Do you find AI to be good with art generation? I can't use any of the art in the projects that I do without extensive inefficient editing since the stuff it spits out isn't how a human would draw. It's good for concept browsing, but not much more for me at the moment.
    - cableshaft 4y ago
      I haven't messed with it much since I find the process for the 'good one' (Midjourney) annoying (go onto a Discord channel, type your request in public for a bunch of people, wait a while, hunt for it amongs the long channel of requests, etc). I'm assuming the process has gotten better since, but I don't know. I'm mostly just using free vector art and simple colors/shapes or whatever simple things I can make in Blender for my art still, in part because there's such a backlash against using any A.I. art right now. Most of it is judging by what people have been saying in groups online. Some people have found it very useful and use it extensively, like for their board game art. It doesn't even have to get 100% of the way there (for coding games based on rulesets). Even 75% would probably save me a lot of time and allow me to find the energy to close the gap as opposed to not even starting since I have so many other projects going on.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  The realization that software development is only maybe 5% coding came way before GPT. > The cope of Whenever I see someone use 'cope' that way, I immediately think they're making a bad faith argument. Is that intentional?
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  The goalposts haven't really moved though? The reality that a lot of people have thrown "engineer" in their title but just write code given a spec or tightly scoped requirements or design has been true for a while now. But for quite a few folks, the coding is the easy part. When building larger systems you're not even that often implementing things from scratch. The decision making, dealing with existing tech debt, tooling, etc. is the hard part. Ambiguity is the hard part and it's always been that way. Don't get me wrong GPT-* is impressive. Heck, I pay for a subscription. But it won't really make a lot of folks at my company notably more productive.
tuatoru 4y ago
The raison d'être of COBOL (now Cobol) in the 1950s was that "there is no need for a developer at all". Managers can produce their own reports. How did that turn out? A whole profession was created. The thing that comes closest to "no developer needed" is Excel. But you really need someone who knows programming if you want a reliable, robust product, even in Excel.
throwaway38290 4y ago
Everyone's focused on writing code - is the code even needed when a good enough AI exists? How many of us are writing code to extract 10% more efficiency out of humans, if they go so do we. Also if software development does survive, it's going to look very attractive to all the other unemployed people.
- anonyfox 4y ago
  i think currently those 6-figure salaries are looking great for like most of humanity - I don't expect seismic shifts here. but there is a funny mechanic at play certainly: once some dev work gets cheap as a commodity, demand surges suddenly since at a low enough price point and availability everyone wants to have some need solved that made no financial sense before.