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Has anyone done experiments with people who have absolutely no programming or programming-like experience and see what they can come up with? From my experienc

Has anyone done experiments with people who have absolutely no programming or programming-like experience and see what they can come up with? From my experiences, any output I got from "AI", required already some level of experience/understanding of the tooling or language to get something useful out of it.

ge96 2y ago
I work for someone who uses Apple Shortcuts and Zappier to bridge things together, that's working with common stuff like transcribing to One Note or Notta to Notion edit: they would use ChatGPT to ask questions/find direction but wouldn't actually use the code if any was given but I think if you're using say WP where you can just dump in random code via a plugin, people would try that
- yakshaving_jgt 2y ago
  Surely the next prompt would be > I pasted the code you gave me into my Wordpress and now when I refresh the page it’s just white. Why?
  - ge96 2y ago
    "Is there a line break at the end of your file?" edit: I've seen this as a potential answer before
- eXpl0it3r 2y ago
  I can see something like Shortcuts/Zappier or some visual things to work quite well for non-programmers. After all, we've had lots of businesses using rule engines and visual editors to "program" their business logic for a long time. I just don't see "AI" spitting out code and people just putting it somewhere and it all working just fine, without having to learn some of the basics first. Maybe some highly integrated system could work, that does the doing for you, and users don't _have_ to deal with code and the tooling to run it. But those systems will again be quite limited, so questionable how "personal" it gets. One thing I've used "AI" for multiple times already with little to no modification, is to write some one-off script to automate some basic repetitive task (e.g. batch converting something with ffmpeg). Can you call this personal software?
  - ge96 2y ago
    I think any code is software/for you = personal It is crazy what Zapier does. I learned Airtable's API myself and setting up the webhooks took me a bit where as it's just there for Zapier. Started to make me think which way is faster do it myself or use this bridge granted Zapier costs money but yeah. So funny how things go we wanted to use Airtable now they're like "we want our own branded Airtable" and eventually we'll probably just go with a hosted DB like RDS anyway ahh well.
    - eXpl0it3r 2y ago
      I'm running my own self-hosted n8n instance for basic automations, which has the added benefit that the OAuth and other credentials remain on my hardware rather than, somewhere in the cloud.
      - hirako2000 2y ago
        I do that too, strangely it isn't a tool many people know about. Knowing how to code though is what makes me value that thing, time saver yet can be as powerful as an app built from the ground up.
leerob 2y ago
There still needs to be more user-friendly interfaces built on top of the raw AI materials. For many of my non-tech friends, the open text input for ChatGPT is intimidating. Yes, it can do everything, but they don't know the right questions to ask. We'll need better products that make app building more "consumer" feeling, versus understanding the intricacies of prompting.
hermitcrab 2y ago
I agree. I wonder if the author has actually tried to build their baby tracking software using AI? I suspect AI would turn out to be a lot less useful than hoped. But there is a middle ground between writing your own code and buying an off the shelf app - no/low code tools. For example, you can use our Easy Data Transform software to drag and drop a data processing pipeline to turn data from one form to another, no need to learn (or ask an AI about) Python+Pandas or R. But this only an option if there is a tool fits your needs, off course.
gtCameron 2y ago
My 9 year old can sit down with the Replit Agent and make a simple game that entertains her for hours. She couldn't make a business application and go out and start selling subscriptions, but there are whole categories of tools that can be created that are ultra simple CRUD apps that bring specific value to one person. Code quality and/or understanding how it works is irrelevant for that use case.
- rmdashrfv 2y ago
  How much is this saying when just a couple decades ago a 9 year old could imagine that a broomstick was a sword and that they were fighting knights on the battlefield? A child can fill in tons of gaps with their animation (see: Rugrats). We're talking about "is AI good enough to enable a 100% non-technical user able to create software on the fly without the non-technical user losing patience?" This is the discussion.
- thefz 2y ago
  > Code quality and/or understanding how it works is irrelevant for that use case. Until you encounter an error that needs debugging, or you want to extend their functionality.

ge96 2y ago

I work for someone who uses Apple Shortcuts and Zappier to bridge things together, that's working with common stuff like transcribing to One Note or Notta to Notion edit: they would use ChatGPT to ask questions/find direction but wouldn't actually use the code if any was given but I think if you're using say WP where you can just dump in random code via a plugin, people would try that

yakshaving_jgt 2y ago
Surely the next prompt would be > I pasted the code you gave me into my Wordpress and now when I refresh the page it’s just white. Why?
- ge96 2y ago
  "Is there a line break at the end of your file?" edit: I've seen this as a potential answer before
eXpl0it3r 2y ago
I can see something like Shortcuts/Zappier or some visual things to work quite well for non-programmers. After all, we've had lots of businesses using rule engines and visual editors to "program" their business logic for a long time. I just don't see "AI" spitting out code and people just putting it somewhere and it all working just fine, without having to learn some of the basics first. Maybe some highly integrated system could work, that does the doing for you, and users don't _have_ to deal with code and the tooling to run it. But those systems will again be quite limited, so questionable how "personal" it gets. One thing I've used "AI" for multiple times already with little to no modification, is to write some one-off script to automate some basic repetitive task (e.g. batch converting something with ffmpeg). Can you call this personal software?
- ge96 2y ago
  I think any code is software/for you = personal It is crazy what Zapier does. I learned Airtable's API myself and setting up the webhooks took me a bit where as it's just there for Zapier. Started to make me think which way is faster do it myself or use this bridge granted Zapier costs money but yeah. So funny how things go we wanted to use Airtable now they're like "we want our own branded Airtable" and eventually we'll probably just go with a hosted DB like RDS anyway ahh well.
  - eXpl0it3r 2y ago
    I'm running my own self-hosted n8n instance for basic automations, which has the added benefit that the OAuth and other credentials remain on my hardware rather than, somewhere in the cloud.
    - hirako2000 2y ago
      I do that too, strangely it isn't a tool many people know about. Knowing how to code though is what makes me value that thing, time saver yet can be as powerful as an app built from the ground up.

leerob 2y ago

There still needs to be more user-friendly interfaces built on top of the raw AI materials. For many of my non-tech friends, the open text input for ChatGPT is intimidating. Yes, it can do everything, but they don't know the right questions to ask. We'll need better products that make app building more "consumer" feeling, versus understanding the intricacies of prompting.

hermitcrab 2y ago

I agree. I wonder if the author has actually tried to build their baby tracking software using AI? I suspect AI would turn out to be a lot less useful than hoped. But there is a middle ground between writing your own code and buying an off the shelf app - no/low code tools. For example, you can use our Easy Data Transform software to drag and drop a data processing pipeline to turn data from one form to another, no need to learn (or ask an AI about) Python+Pandas or R. But this only an option if there is a tool fits your needs, off course.

gtCameron 2y ago

My 9 year old can sit down with the Replit Agent and make a simple game that entertains her for hours. She couldn't make a business application and go out and start selling subscriptions, but there are whole categories of tools that can be created that are ultra simple CRUD apps that bring specific value to one person. Code quality and/or understanding how it works is irrelevant for that use case.

rmdashrfv 2y ago
How much is this saying when just a couple decades ago a 9 year old could imagine that a broomstick was a sword and that they were fighting knights on the battlefield? A child can fill in tons of gaps with their animation (see: Rugrats). We're talking about "is AI good enough to enable a 100% non-technical user able to create software on the fly without the non-technical user losing patience?" This is the discussion.
thefz 2y ago
> Code quality and/or understanding how it works is irrelevant for that use case. Until you encounter an error that needs debugging, or you want to extend their functionality.