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For a non programmer like me google is becoming shockingly good. It is giving working code the first time. I was playing around with it asked it to write code t

For a non programmer like me google is becoming shockingly good. It is giving working code the first time. I was playing around with it asked it to write code to scrape some data of a website to analyse. I was expecting it to write something that would scrape the data and later I would upload the data to it to analyse. But it actually wrote code that scraped and analysed the data. It was basic categorizing and counting of the data but I was not expecting it to do that.

ant6n 2y ago
Last time I tried Gemini, it messed with my google photo data plan and family sharing. I wish I could try the AI separate from my Google account.
- jsnell 2y ago
  > I wish I could try the AI separate from my Google account. If that's a concern, just create another account. Doesn't even require using a separate browser profile, you can be logged into multiple accounts at once and use the account picker in the top right of most their apps to switch.
kccqzy 2y ago
That's the opposite experience of my wife who's in tech but also a non programmer. She wanted to ask Gemini to write code to do some basic data analysis things in a more automated way than Excel. More than once, Gemini wrote a long bash script where some sed invocations are just plain wrong. More than once I've had to debug Gemini-written bash scripts. As a programmer I knew how bash scripts aren't great for readability so I told my wife to ask Gemini to write Python. It resulted in higher code quality, but still contained bugs that are impossible for a non programmer to fix. Sometimes asking a follow up about the bugs would cause Gemini to fix it, but doing so repeatedly will result in Gemini forgetting what's being asked or simply throwing an internal error. Currently IMO you have to be a programmer to use Gemini to write programs effectively.
- sbarre 2y ago
  I've found that good prompting isn't just about asking for results but also giving hints/advice/direction on how to go about the work. I suspect that if Gemini is giving you bash scripts it's because you're note giving it enough direction. As you pointed out, telling it to use Python, or giving it more expectations about how to go about the work or how the output should be, will give better results. When I am prompting for technical or data-driven work, I tend to almost walk through what I imagine the process would be, including steps, tools, etc...
- xbmcuser 2y ago
  I had similar experiences few months back that is why I am saying it is becoming shockingly good the 2.5 is a lot better than the 2.0 version. Another thing I have realized just like google search in the past your query has a lot to do with the results you get. So an example of what you want works at getting better results
  - ac29 2y ago
    > I am saying it is becoming shockingly good the 2.5 is a lot better than the 2.0 version Are you specifically talking about 2.5 Flash? It only came out an hour ago, I dont know how you would have enough experience with it already to come to your conclusion. (I am very impressed with 2.5 Pro, but that is a different model that's been available for several weeks now)
    - xbmcuser 2y ago
      I am talking about 2.5 Pro
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Let's hope that's the case for a while. I want to be able to just tell chat GPT or whatever to create a full project for me, but I know the moment it can do that without any human intervention, I won't be able to find a job.
- drob518 2y ago
ModernMech 2y ago
I've been continually disappointed. I've been told it's getting exponentially better and we won't be able to keep up with how good they get, but I'm not convinced. I'm using them every single day and I'm never shocked or awed by its competence, but instead continually vexxed that isn't not living up to the hype I keep reading. Case in point: there was a post here recently about implementing a JS algorithm that highlighted headings as you scrolled (side note: can anyone remember what the title was? I can't find it again), but I wanted to test the LLM for that kind of task. Pretty much no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to give me a solution that would highlight all of the titles down to the very last one. I knew what the problem was, but even guiding the AI, it couldn't fix the code. I tried multiple AIs, different strategies. The best I could come up with was to guide it step by step on how to fix the code. Even telling it exactly what the problem was, it couldn't fix it. So this goes out to the "you're prompting it wrong" crowd... Can you show me a prompt or a conversation that will get an AI to spit out working code for this task: JavaScript that will highlighting headings as you scroll, to the very last one. The challenge is to prompt it to do this without telling it how to implement it. I figure this should be easy for the AI because this kind of thing is very standard, but maybe I'm just holding it wrong?
- jsnell 2y ago
  Even as a human programmer I don't actually understand your description of the problem well enough to be confident I could correctly guess your intent. What do you mean by "highlight as you scroll"? I guess you want a single heading highlighted at a time, and it should be somehow depending on the viewport. But even that is ambiguous. Do you want the topmost heading in the viewport? The bottom most? Depending on scroll direction? This is what I got one-shot from Gemini 2.5 Pro, with my best guess at what you meant: https://gemini.google.com/share/d81c90ab0b9f https://gemini.google.com/share/d81c90ab0b9f It seems pretty good. Handles scrolling via all possible ways, does the highlighting at load too so that the highlighting is in effect for the initial viewport too. The prompt was "write me some javascript that higlights the topmost heading (h1, h2, etc) in the viewport as the document is scrolled in any way". So I'm thinking your actual requirements are very different than what you actually wrote. That might explain why you did not have much luck with any LLMs.

ant6n 2y ago

Last time I tried Gemini, it messed with my google photo data plan and family sharing. I wish I could try the AI separate from my Google account.

jsnell 2y ago
> I wish I could try the AI separate from my Google account. If that's a concern, just create another account. Doesn't even require using a separate browser profile, you can be logged into multiple accounts at once and use the account picker in the top right of most their apps to switch.

kccqzy 2y ago

That's the opposite experience of my wife who's in tech but also a non programmer. She wanted to ask Gemini to write code to do some basic data analysis things in a more automated way than Excel. More than once, Gemini wrote a long bash script where some sed invocations are just plain wrong. More than once I've had to debug Gemini-written bash scripts. As a programmer I knew how bash scripts aren't great for readability so I told my wife to ask Gemini to write Python. It resulted in higher code quality, but still contained bugs that are impossible for a non programmer to fix. Sometimes asking a follow up about the bugs would cause Gemini to fix it, but doing so repeatedly will result in Gemini forgetting what's being asked or simply throwing an internal error. Currently IMO you have to be a programmer to use Gemini to write programs effectively.

sbarre 2y ago
I've found that good prompting isn't just about asking for results but also giving hints/advice/direction on how to go about the work. I suspect that if Gemini is giving you bash scripts it's because you're note giving it enough direction. As you pointed out, telling it to use Python, or giving it more expectations about how to go about the work or how the output should be, will give better results. When I am prompting for technical or data-driven work, I tend to almost walk through what I imagine the process would be, including steps, tools, etc...
xbmcuser 2y ago
I had similar experiences few months back that is why I am saying it is becoming shockingly good the 2.5 is a lot better than the 2.0 version. Another thing I have realized just like google search in the past your query has a lot to do with the results you get. So an example of what you want works at getting better results
- ac29 2y ago
  > I am saying it is becoming shockingly good the 2.5 is a lot better than the 2.0 version Are you specifically talking about 2.5 Flash? It only came out an hour ago, I dont know how you would have enough experience with it already to come to your conclusion. (I am very impressed with 2.5 Pro, but that is a different model that's been available for several weeks now)
  - xbmcuser 2y ago
    I am talking about 2.5 Pro
999900000999 2y ago
Let's hope that's the case for a while. I want to be able to just tell chat GPT or whatever to create a full project for me, but I know the moment it can do that without any human intervention, I won't be able to find a job.
drob518 2y ago

ModernMech 2y ago

I've been continually disappointed. I've been told it's getting exponentially better and we won't be able to keep up with how good they get, but I'm not convinced. I'm using them every single day and I'm never shocked or awed by its competence, but instead continually vexxed that isn't not living up to the hype I keep reading. Case in point: there was a post here recently about implementing a JS algorithm that highlighted headings as you scrolled (side note: can anyone remember what the title was? I can't find it again), but I wanted to test the LLM for that kind of task. Pretty much no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to give me a solution that would highlight all of the titles down to the very last one. I knew what the problem was, but even guiding the AI, it couldn't fix the code. I tried multiple AIs, different strategies. The best I could come up with was to guide it step by step on how to fix the code. Even telling it exactly what the problem was, it couldn't fix it. So this goes out to the "you're prompting it wrong" crowd... Can you show me a prompt or a conversation that will get an AI to spit out working code for this task: JavaScript that will highlighting headings as you scroll, to the very last one. The challenge is to prompt it to do this without telling it how to implement it. I figure this should be easy for the AI because this kind of thing is very standard, but maybe I'm just holding it wrong?

jsnell 2y ago
Even as a human programmer I don't actually understand your description of the problem well enough to be confident I could correctly guess your intent. What do you mean by "highlight as you scroll"? I guess you want a single heading highlighted at a time, and it should be somehow depending on the viewport. But even that is ambiguous. Do you want the topmost heading in the viewport? The bottom most? Depending on scroll direction? This is what I got one-shot from Gemini 2.5 Pro, with my best guess at what you meant: https://gemini.google.com/share/d81c90ab0b9f https://gemini.google.com/share/d81c90ab0b9f It seems pretty good. Handles scrolling via all possible ways, does the highlighting at load too so that the highlighting is in effect for the initial viewport too. The prompt was "write me some javascript that higlights the topmost heading (h1, h2, etc) in the viewport as the document is scrolled in any way". So I'm thinking your actual requirements are very different than what you actually wrote. That might explain why you did not have much luck with any LLMs.