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> But you can’t say “hey AI do this person’s job for me”. If AI needs to steered around by an expert to be effective that's going to limit its appeal.

dools 3y ago
Why? I wrote a regex in 45 minutes the other day that would have taken me days to get right without AI. It’s an enormously underpriced production boost right now.
- spamizbad 3y ago
  To me this a huge signal that a regex was not the correct approach and that AI just steered you directly into (or passed) Kernighan's Law.
  - dools 3y ago
    No, it’s a very specific regex for parsing a very finicky file format. It’s definitely the best tool for the job, although funnily enough ChatGPT couldn’t get it right in a single regex but Claude could. ChatGPT chickened out and kept giving me functions that looped through applying various filters and regexes.
    - daymanstep 3y ago
      How do you know that the AI got it right?
      - dools 3y ago
        The the code parses the files correctly.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Maybe the LLM prevented an intervention where you were asked why the thing you were working on was taking days, surfacing the need for a better approach.
  - dools 3y ago
    Nope, about a year or so ago we had a similar problem with the same piece of code and instead of fixing it I said “that’ll take me a couple of days the get right” and the guy I was doing it for just went and manually fixed the file format which took him a few hours. This time when a similar thing happened I was able to fix it before he even had to ask how long it might take and the solution is more robust and able to handle several different formats now. It was a definite win.
etempleton 3y ago
I was thinking about this the other day. AI reminds me of your average to below average intern. They kind of get it right, but you have to spend time holding their hand and correcting their work. I don’t see AI replacing experienced professionals any time soon, but I do see it replacing the need for some entry level employees soon.

dools 3y ago

Why? I wrote a regex in 45 minutes the other day that would have taken me days to get right without AI. It’s an enormously underpriced production boost right now.

spamizbad 3y ago
To me this a huge signal that a regex was not the correct approach and that AI just steered you directly into (or passed) Kernighan's Law.
- dools 3y ago
  No, it’s a very specific regex for parsing a very finicky file format. It’s definitely the best tool for the job, although funnily enough ChatGPT couldn’t get it right in a single regex but Claude could. ChatGPT chickened out and kept giving me functions that looped through applying various filters and regexes.
  - daymanstep 3y ago
    How do you know that the AI got it right?
    - dools 3y ago
      The the code parses the files correctly.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
Maybe the LLM prevented an intervention where you were asked why the thing you were working on was taking days, surfacing the need for a better approach.
- dools 3y ago
  Nope, about a year or so ago we had a similar problem with the same piece of code and instead of fixing it I said “that’ll take me a couple of days the get right” and the guy I was doing it for just went and manually fixed the file format which took him a few hours. This time when a similar thing happened I was able to fix it before he even had to ask how long it might take and the solution is more robust and able to handle several different formats now. It was a definite win.

etempleton 3y ago

I was thinking about this the other day. AI reminds me of your average to below average intern. They kind of get it right, but you have to spend time holding their hand and correcting their work. I don’t see AI replacing experienced professionals any time soon, but I do see it replacing the need for some entry level employees soon.