12 ms·

What a strange article. The bulk of it tells me it isn't helping you...yet you conclude it's changed the way you code?

famouswaffles 4y ago
That's a strange take. He generated working code in less than half the time he did alone. What's not helpful about that ? Or must output be perfect before it's deemed helpful?
- gwoolhurme 4y ago
  I don't think it is a strange take but can we meet in the middle... there are a lot of things where I would just write them by hand and not look at a 3rd party source too. I think where some people are coming from is extremes on both ends. It seems silly (to me) to allow this thing to take full reigns of your project vs as a helper.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Yeah, but he had the experience of building it in the first place, and understanding what he was doing and trying to accomplish. That's not a great speedup given that context. He already knew how to hand-code it, so coaxing the GPT and understanding when it wasn't entirely correct made all the difference. One should expect that even if they were programming a task a second time by hand, that there would be a significant speedup in the same ballpark.
  - famouswaffles 4y ago
    the author himself says he thinks the experience gave him half an hour, maybe an hour tops of time. I'm going to assume he knows what he did to get GPT on track better than you do. and of course, he obviously thought it good enough to want to do it again. Either way, the top comment is just odd. This need to see someone use GPT productively and then butt in and be all "well akshually" just to say something likely unrelated, sometimes not even basing the comment on any sort of experience with the model in comparison is really bizarre. It's not enough to think it's not useful. You just have to "correct" people who found it useful.
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      > he author himself says he thinks the experience gave him half an hour, maybe an hour tops of time. Maybe, who knows? The author cannot go back and do the task for a second time (only for a third time and beyond). So it's difficult to say how long it would have taken them. Either way, gaining half an hour to an hour of productivity, while great, is certainly well outside the hype that we hear about GPT. Indeed, it's not even consistent with the headline, "GPT4 writes Stan code so I don't have to". I'm pushing against what I see as unwarranted hype. We're hearing breathless reports by both clueless journalists and by seasoned professionals who are using these tools from the perspective of someone with years of experience, who are then extrapolating that experience out across the spectrum of all possible users. My point is that, if the Stan code example required so much hand-holding, then it's not really helping anyone who hasn't already done it before. This is not an anomaly, indeed, when you ask GPT4 to produce code for non-trivial examples, you need to already have the expertise in that domain to evaluate whether that output is correct, efficient, and error-free.
      - famouswaffles 4y ago
        >Either way, gaining half an hour to an hour of productivity He gained more than that. what he was saying was that no experience might have made the ordeal 3 or 3 and a half hours instead, still a good deal less than the time he originally spent. >I'm pushing against what I see as unwarranted hype. You are hardly equipped to say what is and isn't unwarranted hype for anybody but yourself. It's rather obnoxious to try and impose whatever you think on people giving their personal experiences. No one asked you to pushback on anything so don't. If it's not as useful as you say, then it'll become readily apparent. >We're hearing breathless reports by both clueless journalists and by seasoned professionals who are using these tools from the perspective of someone with years of experience There are many giving similar reports without any/little experience at all. >you ask GPT4 to produce code for non-trivial examples, you need to already have the expertise in that domain to evaluate whether that output is correct, efficient, and error-free. No you don't. Code is code. It runs as intended or it doesn't and it's extremely easy to see if it runs as intended. It's more useful if you have experience certainly but that's it.
chaxor 4y ago
This is just the type of thing everyone has to say right now to appease the 'expert software engineers' who despise the idea of writing anything that's not assembly, or the new version of this type of person that despises working with extremely high level specifications, such as these new linguistic interfaces. Stating it's not helpful is not a useful statement, unless more specific about the type of help to which is being referred.

That's a strange take. He generated working code in less than half the time he did alone. What's not helpful about that ? Or must output be perfect before it's deemed helpful?

gwoolhurme 4y ago
I don't think it is a strange take but can we meet in the middle... there are a lot of things where I would just write them by hand and not look at a 3rd party source too. I think where some people are coming from is extremes on both ends. It seems silly (to me) to allow this thing to take full reigns of your project vs as a helper.
chrisco255 4y ago
Yeah, but he had the experience of building it in the first place, and understanding what he was doing and trying to accomplish. That's not a great speedup given that context. He already knew how to hand-code it, so coaxing the GPT and understanding when it wasn't entirely correct made all the difference. One should expect that even if they were programming a task a second time by hand, that there would be a significant speedup in the same ballpark.
- famouswaffles 4y ago
  the author himself says he thinks the experience gave him half an hour, maybe an hour tops of time. I'm going to assume he knows what he did to get GPT on track better than you do. and of course, he obviously thought it good enough to want to do it again. Either way, the top comment is just odd. This need to see someone use GPT productively and then butt in and be all "well akshually" just to say something likely unrelated, sometimes not even basing the comment on any sort of experience with the model in comparison is really bizarre. It's not enough to think it's not useful. You just have to "correct" people who found it useful.
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    > he author himself says he thinks the experience gave him half an hour, maybe an hour tops of time. Maybe, who knows? The author cannot go back and do the task for a second time (only for a third time and beyond). So it's difficult to say how long it would have taken them. Either way, gaining half an hour to an hour of productivity, while great, is certainly well outside the hype that we hear about GPT. Indeed, it's not even consistent with the headline, "GPT4 writes Stan code so I don't have to". I'm pushing against what I see as unwarranted hype. We're hearing breathless reports by both clueless journalists and by seasoned professionals who are using these tools from the perspective of someone with years of experience, who are then extrapolating that experience out across the spectrum of all possible users. My point is that, if the Stan code example required so much hand-holding, then it's not really helping anyone who hasn't already done it before. This is not an anomaly, indeed, when you ask GPT4 to produce code for non-trivial examples, you need to already have the expertise in that domain to evaluate whether that output is correct, efficient, and error-free.
    - famouswaffles 4y ago
      >Either way, gaining half an hour to an hour of productivity He gained more than that. what he was saying was that no experience might have made the ordeal 3 or 3 and a half hours instead, still a good deal less than the time he originally spent. >I'm pushing against what I see as unwarranted hype. You are hardly equipped to say what is and isn't unwarranted hype for anybody but yourself. It's rather obnoxious to try and impose whatever you think on people giving their personal experiences. No one asked you to pushback on anything so don't. If it's not as useful as you say, then it'll become readily apparent. >We're hearing breathless reports by both clueless journalists and by seasoned professionals who are using these tools from the perspective of someone with years of experience There are many giving similar reports without any/little experience at all. >you ask GPT4 to produce code for non-trivial examples, you need to already have the expertise in that domain to evaluate whether that output is correct, efficient, and error-free. No you don't. Code is code. It runs as intended or it doesn't and it's extremely easy to see if it runs as intended. It's more useful if you have experience certainly but that's it.

chaxor 4y ago

This is just the type of thing everyone has to say right now to appease the 'expert software engineers' who despise the idea of writing anything that's not assembly, or the new version of this type of person that despises working with extremely high level specifications, such as these new linguistic interfaces. Stating it's not helpful is not a useful statement, unless more specific about the type of help to which is being referred.