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I feel like people who write stuff like this don't understand the difference between software and software that delivers value. I mean, you think those graphic

I feel like people who write stuff like this don't understand the difference between software and software that delivers value. I mean, you think those graphics optimizations we pour millions of dollars into before releasing AAA games will matter when the GTX 8020 outperforms a 4090? Hint: Delivering value for actual people is rarely the result of sitting on your hands and waiting for the next big platform, or even rolling up your sleeves and trying to learn how to build the next big thing. You have this idea that by investing energy in something that will be obsoleted you're losing out, but spoiler, that's how 99% of software that delivers actual value works. The cutting edge of tech almost always ends up being PaaS/SaaS serving itself: Your mail gets to you because someone is working on software with limitations we solved decades ago. Your paycheck ends up in your bank account because people invest a ton of time in codebases subject to problems we solved long ago. Your anti-lock brakes aren't built on a Rust codebase, but some horrible memory unsafe mess running on a processor that's a decade out of date. — The reality is: 99% of the effort that goes into trying to build the next big thing goes nowhere. The expected value of you trying to learn "the actual AI stuff" to the greater world is near 0 compared to you "just prompt engineering" and putting out something that solves a pain-point nicely with GPT 3.5. At the end of the day most of the value that gets delivered to actual users comes from engineers who went deeper into extracting value from the current thing. We still need people to work on the next big thing so that the 1% of effort that isn't wasted can actually materialize... but in my experience the most successful engineers in that regard are still able to realize the delusion it requires, without being paralyzed by the cognitive dissonance that realization invites.

parpfish 3y ago
prompt engineering can definitely deliver value for a customer, but i don't think it will deliver value to a developer in terms of building a sustainable career. a different analogy that gets at my original concern: becoming an expert prompt engineer for an particular LLM is like becoming a power user for a piece of proprietary software that isn't getting any more updates.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  The first point doesn't follow the second: there will always be a sustainable career in building software that delivers value. In tech we take it for granted that just because there's some new hotness everyone wants to jump on it day 1. GPT 5 could drop tomorrow and if your tool delivers value using 3.5, it's not going to magically stop delivering value, and in most verticals people will prefer your battle tested 3.5 to some brand new 5. And if 5 does simplify prompts for your use case and there'll still only be two options: - making a the same thing as what you made with 3.5 is now trivial... in which case you still have the mindshare and the distribution solved to a degree your newly enabled clones don't. - making a better version of what you made is now trivial... in which case you can just as trivially improve your version and already have the mindshare and distribution solved. At the end of the day software developers often struggle to fit software into the larger ecosystem it slots into before it becomes something valuable, and to be GPT has been an amazing case study in the fact. I think the use of the word engineering did half the damage, and I think people confusing the twitter memes with the interesting attempts at prompt engineering (via ReACT, Gorilla, etc) did the other half, but at the end of the day I think a lot of people will be left kicking themselves when "misguided prompt engineers" end up solving real useful problems in ways they didn't think were possible well before we reach the arbitrary goalposts for foundation models that people keep setting up.

parpfish 3y ago

prompt engineering can definitely deliver value for a customer, but i don't think it will deliver value to a developer in terms of building a sustainable career. a different analogy that gets at my original concern: becoming an expert prompt engineer for an particular LLM is like becoming a power user for a piece of proprietary software that isn't getting any more updates.

BoorishBears 3y ago
The first point doesn't follow the second: there will always be a sustainable career in building software that delivers value. In tech we take it for granted that just because there's some new hotness everyone wants to jump on it day 1. GPT 5 could drop tomorrow and if your tool delivers value using 3.5, it's not going to magically stop delivering value, and in most verticals people will prefer your battle tested 3.5 to some brand new 5. And if 5 does simplify prompts for your use case and there'll still only be two options: - making a the same thing as what you made with 3.5 is now trivial... in which case you still have the mindshare and the distribution solved to a degree your newly enabled clones don't. - making a better version of what you made is now trivial... in which case you can just as trivially improve your version and already have the mindshare and distribution solved. At the end of the day software developers often struggle to fit software into the larger ecosystem it slots into before it becomes something valuable, and to be GPT has been an amazing case study in the fact. I think the use of the word engineering did half the damage, and I think people confusing the twitter memes with the interesting attempts at prompt engineering (via ReACT, Gorilla, etc) did the other half, but at the end of the day I think a lot of people will be left kicking themselves when "misguided prompt engineers" end up solving real useful problems in ways they didn't think were possible well before we reach the arbitrary goalposts for foundation models that people keep setting up.