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Perhaps, but this space suffers from the Armageddon astronaut/fire figher problem. It is easier to teach a Computer Science Major good english, than it is to te
by voz_ 3y ago
Perhaps, but this space suffers from the Armageddon astronaut/fire figher problem. It is easier to teach a Computer Science Major good english, than it is to teach an English Major computer science.
- jeron 3y agoI always thought this problem was better thought of as software engineer/farmer problem - it's easer to teach a software engineer about agriculture than the other way around
- xyzzy123 3y agoNow I'm really wondering if that's true or not. Software engineering can be self-studied very cheaply, lots of free resources, mostly you just need time and motivation. Failure is usually cheap. Farming on the other hand requires more local, implicit and hands-on knowledge, capital requirements are high, feedback cycles are slower and failure is expensive.
- dullcrisp 3y agoYeah one doesn’t sound obviously easier than the other to me
- adastra22 3y agoI really, really doubt any of these examples.
- kyleyeats 3y agoThe guys pressing buttons are REALLY confident going into this one.
- voz_ 3y agoI small scale farm (done everything from windowsill to a half acre and back), crops and veggies only, no animals. It’s much more difficult than software engineering, in every way.
- TrueDuality 3y agoI would argue the same is true of farming as well, you're just comparing differences in final outcomes. You can start learning basic farming techniques with a few pots, some seeds, water and a sunny spot in the same way you can get a raspberry pi and a keyboard sourcing information for both from YouTube fairly effectively. There might be an argument for cost at the highest scale in each field which few in either profession really make it to but I'd bet even then its pretty on par. I've been a huge fan of comparing the complexity or cost of a profession. We as a species specialize because doing these tasks in the most efficient way requires managing large number of details that are not obvious at first glance.
- tjr225 3y ago[dead]
- sitkack 3y agoSubstantiate your claim! A farmer is much better generalist than a "software engineer". FFS, the engineer doesn't even use science and the farmer does.
- putnambr 3y agoReally? You think someone who spends all day building systems with software will have an easy time studying and gaining a CDL, learning about soil quality, drainage, fertilization, crop strategies, financing agreements (lease to own agreements, commodities futures, even forex), working with hired labor and managing contractors, engine repair and small scale fabrication? I think the farmer would undoubtedly get bored of being cooped up inside all day at a computer, but they wouldn't have a hard time understanding how to create a system from small moving pieces that they can direct.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoI don't think prompt engineering shares a whole lot with humanities higher education, but the argument that English is easier seems very non-obvious to me. I'd expect the relative skill floor for English to be significantly higher because everyone in the anglosphere gets a minimum of 12 years of intensive English education. Moreover, the starting point for additional higher education is usually native fluency/mastery and even then jobs requiring actual English credentials will usually require a graduate degree on top. Contrast that with programming, where most developers will have learned their first language in college and those 1-3 years of introductory education were enough that they're usually considered hireable by the end of undergrad. Some (few) people can even get to that point with only a 3-6 month intensive bootcamp despite no prior experience.
- sitkack 3y agoCite.
- jatins 3y agoDon't think prompting LLMs require particularly "good" English in the first place. You can say a half baked sentence with typos and it'll still make sense of it. Plus when you go meta and ask LLMs to generate prompts for themselves, you own language proficiency becomes even less important. I do think English/language proficiency will help with Generative image AIs like Midjourney. Like if someone could describe a scene in extreme detail that's more likely to produce a result closer to what you want.
- sharemywin 3y agof*cking Meta. it took me a second to parse your sentence. at first I thought you meant using Llama or something. instead of prompts generating prompts.
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoI actually strongly disagree with this. It's easier to teach a CS major passable English, the bar for which is much lower than passable code. If we cared about English in software engineering as much as we care about code it would be of similar difficulty.