5 ms·

I won't comment on the tone (I can't evaluate for you if they were harsh and how you should take it - I myself didn't find them too rude, more like irritated ma

by jraph 3y ago

I won't comment on the tone (I can't evaluate for you if they were harsh and how you should take it - I myself didn't find them too rude, more like irritated maybe) but they are right, in essence. I was going to answer something like this too. You want to be 100% sure on what you run on your prod, so you really don't want to automate writing such a script with a tool that can hallucinate things. I only skimmed the script because I don't really want to be reading hallucinated code, that's not very interesting, but I already saw two flaws: - it tries to detect the package manager, among two random ones that exist. Why those two? - there's a list of packages that surely applies to only one on them and will break with the other, if it doesn't already break with the first (who knows before trying or before careful review?). It proposes helpers to run random stuff, but you really want to spend the time learning these tools directly because you will end up having to use them in different ways for different situations. You don't want to spend time learning how to use the generated script, that's extra, pointless, work. You also want to be damn sure the generated helpers are harmless and do the right things so you will have to take a lot of time reviewing them. Of course you could be learning stuff will reviewing these parts, but you really want to learn those things from actually experienced people instead so you get to be pointed at relevant stuff. And then indeed there will be maintenance work. > Personally I think that if you don't think ChatGPT is useful for very many things, you're not using it right! Haha :) Be careful with ChatGPT. Because you've actually just showed us that you are using it in ways that could be detrimental to you or your coworkers. You took a very high quality article and fed it to ChatGPT to generate a script that you thought useful to share to the world on HN. You actually need to know exactly and be familiar with what you are installing on your servers, and you need to know how to use this stuff because otherwise, in time of crisis, you won't know what to do. You need to take the time to learn this stuff. ChatGPT won't help you learn faster here, and this script is a shortcut you can't actually take. It does the opposite of helping you here. It's a bit like your non expert friend doing your homework. They have no responsibility, and you haven't learned what the teacher wanted you to learn yourself, and you are not sure the friend even did good work. > if you dislike appreciating a diversity of approaches beyond your own, perhaps it is you who ought "go find a job in a different field." If the other commenter is anything like me, we are seeing people posting ChatGPT-generated stuff all too frequently and we find this boring. We know ChatGPT exists. We are out there for learning things and read actual insight from the posts and the commenter. LLM Generated things don't come with any insight and actual knowledge. On a personal note, I highly distrust LLM output. Way more than random HN comments. I will need to review carefully what I read on HN from actual people, but even more what the LLM says, with my vague knowledge on how it works. I bet most of us here on HN don't want to see comments citing LLM-generated stuff. And bad luck, the quality difference between this and an article from Brendan Gregg is stupidly huge so we are definitely expecting more when we are just done reading one. About your suggestion to make the script work on different distros: you wouldn't actually want this. You would want a script that is finely adapted to your own, very specific production. You can't actually have general purpose script for this. If you have several distros in your production, you will actually need different scripts because it's likely the servers on different distros will have very different goals and ways of working. Of course the install procedure will be specific to how you deploy and your script will likely won't help because it probably doesn't match how your thing is deployed.

keepamovin 3y ago
Guys, it's not meant to be the keystone for your production servers. I get your points about infra and LLMs but this is not the place for them. Surely there's some more deserving targets to your 'anti-AI-acrimony'?? Hahah! :) More poignantly however the comments here decrying the use of AI tooling as suspicious, incorrect hallucinations, instead suggest that this ire is more about how these people fear that AI, LLMs and ChatGPT are obviating the need for people with their particular expertise, and are desperate to present otherwise. And so they criticize it profusely, even if irrational. A truly future-proof take would be to embrace the trend, and see how it enhances, rather than erodes their prospects. But back to the point at hand -- it says very clearly at the top of the comment it's a first draft. In fact, I spent a little bit of time honing with a prompt. It says it's untested and suggests ways to improve. Hahaha! :) A good sysadmin would focus on suggesting ways it could be improved and recognize it for its convenience, a goal they share. They'd likely clearly see that it's not claiming to be either: a substitute for using the tools in another way; nor for learning what they are; but rather can very much be an aid in learning and using the tools. To instead allow personal, and perhaps mistaken biases against LLMs occlude your productivity or utilization of things seems unwise. There's nothing wrong with having your personal opinions, but failing to see the other ways that things could be useful outside of that, is a mistake, I imagine. More bigger picture, now: what you do imagine the purpose of this script was? You can always look for ineptitude and wrong. To some extent that attitude might even underlie an admirable caution, and could be indicative of expertise -- even if clumsily expressed. But at the same time such attitudes could underpin a not-so-admirable mistaken assumption of stupidity on the part of others, blindness to approaches outside of one's own experience, or an failure to communicate respectfully. It might be hard to argue these were wise traits. I get your disdain for what you see as the high amount of low quality LLM output that is putting everything at risk, but while a valid opinion, this particular thread is not the best target of that. You can try to make it about that, but why? Then you're just abusing someone else's words as a wrong vehicle for venting your own gripes, right? If you want to vent, do a "Tell HN:" or a blog post. Not reply to someone else's completely-unrelated-to-your-angst comment. In other words, it's possible to express that opinion without taking aim at something to which that does not apply. There's no need to misuse someone's else's comment as a way soapbox for your own gripes. I get if that seemed wise, but it wasn't. Also, it's possible to raise the question of balance. The criticisms of the script comment erode their own credibility by failing to note anything good in what they're replying to. Instead waxing verbosely why they are "right" and "correct.", suggesting instead that's the primary aim sought by such comments. Yet, there's no absolutes in this, unless you mistakenly make your definition overly narrow -- then it's meaningless. If you're being real, there's a multitude of ways to do things "right", and a multitude of approaches, as well as uses for, and improvements of, the script I propose in my comment, and approaches like it. A wise interpretation would clearly see such a script aims to be a collection of useful tools in the same way that many unix tools are collections of useful related functions. If you'd like to use my comment as a generalized jumping off point for your own gripes on LLMs or need to criticize, it would be better instead to find a more appropriate target so as not to come across as being an abusive and overly-critical bully, which I'm sure you're actually not, in fact. Your comment comes across as if you misread mine as someone suggesting you provision your entire infrastructure hinging on the correctness of this HN comment, and uses that unhinged assumption as a basis for then criticizing it as something it never intended, nor claimed, to be. Hahaha! :) Again, I think the semi-hysterical hyperbole of the responses speaks to the 'fear of replacement' that must be gripping the ranks of these. There must be a perception of employers that this is true, and these people fear. That sucks, but it's better to be more rational in response, than less. So your stated skepticism and criticisms would arrive more warranted if they were more precise and balanced. Better yet, as to commenting ... rather than imposing your view that this is "harmful", find ways that it's not, or ways to make it better. Or just, you know, appreciate that there's multiple ways to the same goal, and everyone can get there differently, and doesn't make you "right" and them "wrong". To fail to see how my comment and script could be good or useful and instead impose one's own insecurities or generalized sentiments toward current ChatGPT, could also be considered boring... So...I suspect the pearl clutching is unwarranted, and it's a false equivalence to equate use of ChatGPT with your presumption of technical ineptitude. True technical ineptitude could also include refusal to embrace new technologies, or an overly limited perspective on what people say. Or even an overly narrow view of your own prospects for the future given the introduction of these disruptive technologies! Hahaha! :)

by jraph 3y ago

keepamovin 3y ago

Guys, it's not meant to be the keystone for your production servers. I get your points about infra and LLMs but this is not the place for them. Surely there's some more deserving targets to your 'anti-AI-acrimony'?? Hahah! :) More poignantly however the comments here decrying the use of AI tooling as suspicious, incorrect hallucinations, instead suggest that this ire is more about how these people fear that AI, LLMs and ChatGPT are obviating the need for people with their particular expertise, and are desperate to present otherwise. And so they criticize it profusely, even if irrational. A truly future-proof take would be to embrace the trend, and see how it enhances, rather than erodes their prospects. But back to the point at hand -- it says very clearly at the top of the comment it's a first draft. In fact, I spent a little bit of time honing with a prompt. It says it's untested and suggests ways to improve. Hahaha! :) A good sysadmin would focus on suggesting ways it could be improved and recognize it for its convenience, a goal they share. They'd likely clearly see that it's not claiming to be either: a substitute for using the tools in another way; nor for learning what they are; but rather can very much be an aid in learning and using the tools. To instead allow personal, and perhaps mistaken biases against LLMs occlude your productivity or utilization of things seems unwise. There's nothing wrong with having your personal opinions, but failing to see the other ways that things could be useful outside of that, is a mistake, I imagine. More bigger picture, now: what you do imagine the purpose of this script was? You can always look for ineptitude and wrong. To some extent that attitude might even underlie an admirable caution, and could be indicative of expertise -- even if clumsily expressed. But at the same time such attitudes could underpin a not-so-admirable mistaken assumption of stupidity on the part of others, blindness to approaches outside of one's own experience, or an failure to communicate respectfully. It might be hard to argue these were wise traits. I get your disdain for what you see as the high amount of low quality LLM output that is putting everything at risk, but while a valid opinion, this particular thread is not the best target of that. You can try to make it about that, but why? Then you're just abusing someone else's words as a wrong vehicle for venting your own gripes, right? If you want to vent, do a "Tell HN:" or a blog post. Not reply to someone else's completely-unrelated-to-your-angst comment. In other words, it's possible to express that opinion without taking aim at something to which that does not apply. There's no need to misuse someone's else's comment as a way soapbox for your own gripes. I get if that seemed wise, but it wasn't. Also, it's possible to raise the question of balance. The criticisms of the script comment erode their own credibility by failing to note anything good in what they're replying to. Instead waxing verbosely why they are "right" and "correct.", suggesting instead that's the primary aim sought by such comments. Yet, there's no absolutes in this, unless you mistakenly make your definition overly narrow -- then it's meaningless. If you're being real, there's a multitude of ways to do things "right", and a multitude of approaches, as well as uses for, and improvements of, the script I propose in my comment, and approaches like it. A wise interpretation would clearly see such a script aims to be a collection of useful tools in the same way that many unix tools are collections of useful related functions. If you'd like to use my comment as a generalized jumping off point for your own gripes on LLMs or need to criticize, it would be better instead to find a more appropriate target so as not to come across as being an abusive and overly-critical bully, which I'm sure you're actually not, in fact. Your comment comes across as if you misread mine as someone suggesting you provision your entire infrastructure hinging on the correctness of this HN comment, and uses that unhinged assumption as a basis for then criticizing it as something it never intended, nor claimed, to be. Hahaha! :) Again, I think the semi-hysterical hyperbole of the responses speaks to the 'fear of replacement' that must be gripping the ranks of these. There must be a perception of employers that this is true, and these people fear. That sucks, but it's better to be more rational in response, than less. So your stated skepticism and criticisms would arrive more warranted if they were more precise and balanced. Better yet, as to commenting ... rather than imposing your view that this is "harmful", find ways that it's not, or ways to make it better. Or just, you know, appreciate that there's multiple ways to the same goal, and everyone can get there differently, and doesn't make you "right" and them "wrong". To fail to see how my comment and script could be good or useful and instead impose one's own insecurities or generalized sentiments toward current ChatGPT, could also be considered boring... So...I suspect the pearl clutching is unwarranted, and it's a false equivalence to equate use of ChatGPT with your presumption of technical ineptitude. True technical ineptitude could also include refusal to embrace new technologies, or an overly limited perspective on what people say. Or even an overly narrow view of your own prospects for the future given the introduction of these disruptive technologies! Hahaha! :)