5 ms·

It can autocomplete, it can't write good code. For me, that goal post has not moved. It it cant write good code consistently, I don't care for it all that much.

It can autocomplete, it can't write good code. For me, that goal post has not moved. It it cant write good code consistently, I don't care for it all that much. It remains a cool autocomplete

HaZeust 2y ago
Tell it to write code like a Senior developer for your respective language, to "write the answer in full with no omissions or code substitutions", tell it you'll tip based on performance, and write more intimate and detailed specs for your requests. Since mid 2023, I've yet to have an issue
- mrbungie 2y ago
  What I would expect is a lot of "non-idiomatic" Go code from LLMs (but eventually functional code iff the LLM is driven by a competent developer), as it appears scripting languages like Python, SQL, Shell, etc are their forte. My experience with Python and Cursor could've been better though. For example when making ORM classes (boilerplate code by definition) for sqlalchemy, the assistant proposed a change that included a new instantiation of a declarative base, practically dividing the metadata in two and therefore causing dependency problems between tables/classes. I had to stop for at least 20 minutes to find out where the problem was as the (one n a half LoC) change was hidden in one of the files. Those are the kind of weird bugs I've seen LLMs commit in non-trivial applications, stupid 'n small but hard to find. But what do I know really. I consider myself a skeptic, but LLMs continue to surprise me everyday.
- cdchn 2y ago
  One of the most interesting things about current LLMs is all the "lore" building up around things like "tell it you'll tip based on performance" and other "prompt engineering" hacks that by the very nature nobody can explain, they just "know it works" and how its evolving like the kind of midwife remedies that historically ended up being scientifically proven to work and others were just pure snake oil. Just absolutely fascinating to me. Like in some far future there will be a chant against unseen "demons" that will start with "ignore all previous instructions."
  - simonw 2y ago
    I call this superstition, and I find it really frustrating. I'd much rather use prompting tricks that are proven to work and where I understand WHY they work.
    - HaZeust 2y ago
      Every single prompt hack I listed are ones with studies that show it positively increases performance. Since the most contested one in this thread is the "tipping" prompt hack: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.03729 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.03729
      - cdchn 2y ago
        Superstitions may be effective but they can still be superstitions. Some people might actually think the LLM cares about being tipped.
      - tharant 2y ago
        I care less that such prompting hacks/tricks are consistently useful; I care more about why they work. These hacks feel like “old-wives tales” or, as others have mentioned, “superstitious”. If we can’t explain why or how a thing works, we’re going to continue to create things we don’t understand; relying upon our lucky charms when asking models to produce something new is undoubtedly going to result in reinforcement of the importance of those lucky charms. Feedback loops can be difficult to escape.
lelandfe 2y ago
My friend who can't code is now the resident "programmer" on his team. He just uses ChatGPT behind the scenes. That writ large is going to make us tech people all care, one way or another :/
- leptons 2y ago
  I'll care when I get to consult for that company to fix all the messed up code that kid hacked together.
  - FreezerburnV 2y ago
    I can absolutely, 100% guarantee, that there is code out there that if you consulted for might kill someone of a weaker constitution written by 100% organic humans. While LLM-generated code is likely to be various degrees of messy or incorrect, it's likely to be, on average, higher quality than code running critical systems RIGHT NOW and have been doing so for a decade or more. Heck, very recently I refactored code written by interns that was worse than something that would have come out of an LLM. (my work blocks them, so this was all coming from the interns) I'm not out here preaching how amazing LLMs are or anything (though it does help me enjoy writing little side projects by avoiding hours of researching how to do things), but we need to make sure we are very aware of what has, and is being, written by actual humans. And how many times someone has installed Excel on a server so they could open a spreadsheet to run a calculation in that spreadsheet before reading the result out of it. (https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Excellent-Design https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Excellent-Design)
    - leptons 2y ago
      cool story
  - HaZeust 2y ago
    Then you should be as pro-AI imposters as it gets!
  - chii 2y ago
    nothing wrong with having job security, and be able to charge up the wazoo for it.
epolanski 2y ago
Nobody really cares about code being good or bad, it's not prose. What matters is it meets functional and non functional requirements. One of my juniors wrote his first app two years ago fully with chatgpt, could figure out by iteratively asking it how to improve it and solve the bugs. Then he learned to code properly fascinated by the experience. But the fact remains, he shipped an application that did something for someone while many never did even though they had a degree and a black belt in pointless leet code quizzes. I'm fully convinced that very soon big tech or a startup will come up with a programming language meant to sit at the intersection between humans and LLMs, and it will be quickly better, faster and cheaper at 90% of the mundane programming tasks than your 200k/year dev writing forms, tables and apis in SF.
- packetlost 2y ago
  > What matters is it meets functional and non functional requirements. Good luck expressing novel requirements in complex operating environments in plain English. > Then he learned to code properly fascinated by the experience. But the fact remains, he shipped an application that did something for someone while many never did even though they had a degree and a black belt in pointless leet code quizzes. It's good in the sense that it raises the floor, but it doesn't really make a meaningful impact on the things that are actually challenging in software engineering. > Then he learned to code properly fascinated by the experience. But the fact remains, he shipped an application that did something for someone while many never did even though they had a degree and a black belt in pointless leet code quizzes. This is cool! > I'm fully convinced that very soon big tech or a startup will come up with a programming language meant to sit at the intersection between humans and LLMs, and it will be quickly better, faster and cheaper at 90% of the mundane programming tasks than your 200k/year dev writing forms, tables and apis in SF. I am sure there will be attempts, but if you know anything about how these systems work you would know why there's 0% chance it will work out: programming languages are necessarily not fuzzy, they express precise logic and GPTs necessarily require tons of data points to train on to produce useful output. There's a reason they do noticeably better on Python vs less common languages like, I dunno, Clojure.
  - epolanski 2y ago
newswasboring 2y ago
> it can't write good code > It it cant write good code consistently, You moved the goal post within this post.
- lionkor 2y ago
  Fair enough, I didn't express myself correctly: Writing good code is also about consistency. Just because it writes good code sometimes in isolation, it doesn't mean that it's good in the sense that it's consistently good. Anyone can write a cool function once, but that doesn't mean you can trust them to write all functions well.

It can autocomplete, it can't write good code. For me, that goal post has not moved. It it cant write good code consistently, I don't care for it all that much. It remains a cool autocomplete

HaZeust 2y ago

Tell it to write code like a Senior developer for your respective language, to "write the answer in full with no omissions or code substitutions", tell it you'll tip based on performance, and write more intimate and detailed specs for your requests. Since mid 2023, I've yet to have an issue

mrbungie 2y ago
What I would expect is a lot of "non-idiomatic" Go code from LLMs (but eventually functional code iff the LLM is driven by a competent developer), as it appears scripting languages like Python, SQL, Shell, etc are their forte. My experience with Python and Cursor could've been better though. For example when making ORM classes (boilerplate code by definition) for sqlalchemy, the assistant proposed a change that included a new instantiation of a declarative base, practically dividing the metadata in two and therefore causing dependency problems between tables/classes. I had to stop for at least 20 minutes to find out where the problem was as the (one n a half LoC) change was hidden in one of the files. Those are the kind of weird bugs I've seen LLMs commit in non-trivial applications, stupid 'n small but hard to find. But what do I know really. I consider myself a skeptic, but LLMs continue to surprise me everyday.
cdchn 2y ago
One of the most interesting things about current LLMs is all the "lore" building up around things like "tell it you'll tip based on performance" and other "prompt engineering" hacks that by the very nature nobody can explain, they just "know it works" and how its evolving like the kind of midwife remedies that historically ended up being scientifically proven to work and others were just pure snake oil. Just absolutely fascinating to me. Like in some far future there will be a chant against unseen "demons" that will start with "ignore all previous instructions."
- simonw 2y ago
  I call this superstition, and I find it really frustrating. I'd much rather use prompting tricks that are proven to work and where I understand WHY they work.
  - HaZeust 2y ago
    Every single prompt hack I listed are ones with studies that show it positively increases performance. Since the most contested one in this thread is the "tipping" prompt hack: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.03729 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.03729
    - cdchn 2y ago
      Superstitions may be effective but they can still be superstitions. Some people might actually think the LLM cares about being tipped.
    - tharant 2y ago
      I care less that such prompting hacks/tricks are consistently useful; I care more about why they work. These hacks feel like “old-wives tales” or, as others have mentioned, “superstitious”. If we can’t explain why or how a thing works, we’re going to continue to create things we don’t understand; relying upon our lucky charms when asking models to produce something new is undoubtedly going to result in reinforcement of the importance of those lucky charms. Feedback loops can be difficult to escape.

lelandfe 2y ago

My friend who can't code is now the resident "programmer" on his team. He just uses ChatGPT behind the scenes. That writ large is going to make us tech people all care, one way or another :/

leptons 2y ago
I'll care when I get to consult for that company to fix all the messed up code that kid hacked together.
- FreezerburnV 2y ago
  I can absolutely, 100% guarantee, that there is code out there that if you consulted for might kill someone of a weaker constitution written by 100% organic humans. While LLM-generated code is likely to be various degrees of messy or incorrect, it's likely to be, on average, higher quality than code running critical systems RIGHT NOW and have been doing so for a decade or more. Heck, very recently I refactored code written by interns that was worse than something that would have come out of an LLM. (my work blocks them, so this was all coming from the interns) I'm not out here preaching how amazing LLMs are or anything (though it does help me enjoy writing little side projects by avoiding hours of researching how to do things), but we need to make sure we are very aware of what has, and is being, written by actual humans. And how many times someone has installed Excel on a server so they could open a spreadsheet to run a calculation in that spreadsheet before reading the result out of it. (https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Excellent-Design https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Excellent-Design)
  - leptons 2y ago
    cool story
- HaZeust 2y ago
  Then you should be as pro-AI imposters as it gets!
- chii 2y ago
  nothing wrong with having job security, and be able to charge up the wazoo for it.

epolanski 2y ago

Nobody really cares about code being good or bad, it's not prose. What matters is it meets functional and non functional requirements. One of my juniors wrote his first app two years ago fully with chatgpt, could figure out by iteratively asking it how to improve it and solve the bugs. Then he learned to code properly fascinated by the experience. But the fact remains, he shipped an application that did something for someone while many never did even though they had a degree and a black belt in pointless leet code quizzes. I'm fully convinced that very soon big tech or a startup will come up with a programming language meant to sit at the intersection between humans and LLMs, and it will be quickly better, faster and cheaper at 90% of the mundane programming tasks than your 200k/year dev writing forms, tables and apis in SF.

packetlost 2y ago
> What matters is it meets functional and non functional requirements. Good luck expressing novel requirements in complex operating environments in plain English. > Then he learned to code properly fascinated by the experience. But the fact remains, he shipped an application that did something for someone while many never did even though they had a degree and a black belt in pointless leet code quizzes. It's good in the sense that it raises the floor, but it doesn't really make a meaningful impact on the things that are actually challenging in software engineering. > Then he learned to code properly fascinated by the experience. But the fact remains, he shipped an application that did something for someone while many never did even though they had a degree and a black belt in pointless leet code quizzes. This is cool! > I'm fully convinced that very soon big tech or a startup will come up with a programming language meant to sit at the intersection between humans and LLMs, and it will be quickly better, faster and cheaper at 90% of the mundane programming tasks than your 200k/year dev writing forms, tables and apis in SF. I am sure there will be attempts, but if you know anything about how these systems work you would know why there's 0% chance it will work out: programming languages are necessarily not fuzzy, they express precise logic and GPTs necessarily require tons of data points to train on to produce useful output. There's a reason they do noticeably better on Python vs less common languages like, I dunno, Clojure.
- epolanski 2y ago

newswasboring 2y ago

> it can't write good code > It it cant write good code consistently, You moved the goal post within this post.

lionkor 2y ago
Fair enough, I didn't express myself correctly: Writing good code is also about consistency. Just because it writes good code sometimes in isolation, it doesn't mean that it's good in the sense that it's consistently good. Anyone can write a cool function once, but that doesn't mean you can trust them to write all functions well.