6 ms·

> That's exactly what they do for me - especially since the November model releases (GPT-5.1, Opus 4.5). I mean it's inherently impossible, given the statistic

> That's exactly what they do for me - especially since the November model releases (GPT-5.1, Opus 4.5). I mean it's inherently impossible, given the statistical nature of LLMs, so I am not sure are you claiming this out of ignorance or other interests, but again, what you claim is impossible due to the very nature of LLMs.

lunar_mycroft 8mo ago
It's impossible for human developers too. Natural language descriptions of a program are either much more painful and time consuming to write than the code they describe, or contain some degree of ambiguity which the thing translating the description into code has to resolve (and the probability of the resolution the entity writing the description would have chosen and the one entity translating it into code chose matching perfectly approach zero). It can make sense to trade off some amount of control for productivity, but the tradeoff is inherent as soon as a project moves beyond a single developer hand writing all of the code.
- hansmayer 8mo ago
  I agree - the whole BS of "Hottest new programming language is English" is complete nonsense. There is something about writing the code directly from your mind that skips over the "language circuits" and makes it much more precise. Perhaps as humans with education we obtain an ability to think in programming language itself I suppose? It's probably similar to what happens in the mind of a composer or painter. This is why the natural language will never be the interface the big "AI" companies are making it to be.
simonw 8mo ago
It's impossible, and yet I experience it on a daily basis. YMMV. I've had a lot of practice at prompting.
- hansmayer 8mo ago
  > YMMV. I've had a lot of practice at prompting. Ah, the old "you suck at prompting" angle again, isn't it? If you're going to shill this hard, at least come up with something new and original, this is sounding more than desperate.
  - simonw 8mo ago
    Most people suck at playing the piano. Most people suck at prompting coding agents. If you practice either of those things you'll get better at them. I really don't understand the "stop telling me I'm holding it wrong" argument. You probably are holding it wrong! Is this born out of some weird belief that "AI" is meant to be science fiction technology that you don't ever need to learn how to use? That would help explain why conversations like this are full of people who claim to get great results and other people who say every time they've tried it the results have been terrible.
    - hansmayer 8mo ago
      > Most people suck at playing the piano. Most people suck at prompting coding agents. If you practice either of those things you'll get better at them. It would be funny, if by now I weren't convinced you are pushing these false analogies on purpose. The key difference between a piano and LLMs being, the piano will produce the same sounds to a same sequence of keys. Every single time. A piano is deterministic. The LLMs are not, and you know it, which makes your constant comparison of deterministic with non-deterministic tools sound a bit dishonest. So please stop using these very weak analogies. > I really don't understand the "stop telling me I'm holding it wrong" argument. You probably are holding it wrong! Right, another weak argument. Writing English language paragraphs is not a science you seem to imply it is. You're not the only person using the LLMs intensively for the last years, and it's not like there this huge secret to using them - after all they use natural language as their primary interface. But that's besides the point. We're not discussing if they are hard or easy to use or whatever. We are discussing if I should replace the magnificent supercomputer already placed in my head by mother nature or God or Aliens or whatever you believe in, for a very shitty, downgraded version 0.0.1 of it sitting in someone's datacenter, all for the sake of sometimes cutting some corners by getting that quick awk/sed oneliner or some boilerplate code? I don't think that's a worthy tradeoff, especially when the relevant reports indicate an objective slowdown, which probably also explains the so-called LLM-fatigue. > Is this born out of some weird belief that "AI" is meant to be science fiction technology that you don't ever need to learn how to use? No, actually it is born out of the weird belief which your sponsors have been either explicitly or implicitly promoting, now for the 4th year, in various intensities and frequencies, that the LLM technology will be equal to a "country of PhDs in a datacenter". All of this based on the super weird transhumanist ideology a lot of the people directly or indirectly sponsoring your writing actively believe in. And whether you like it or not, even if you have never implied the same, you have been a useful helper by providing a more "rational" sounding voice, commenting on the supposed incremental improvements and progress and what not.
- lunar_mycroft 8mo ago
  What you've experienced is different from what was originally mentioned though. Even with the best human developers, you can't provide a normal natural language prompt and get back the exact code you would have written, because natural language has ambiguities and the probability that the other person (or LLM) will resolve all of them exactly as you would is approaches zero. Collaborating with someone/something else via natural language in a programming project inherently trades control for productivity (or the promise of it). That tradeoff can be worth it depending on how much productivity you gain and how competent the collaborator is, but it can't be avoided.

lunar_mycroft 8mo ago

It's impossible for human developers too. Natural language descriptions of a program are either much more painful and time consuming to write than the code they describe, or contain some degree of ambiguity which the thing translating the description into code has to resolve (and the probability of the resolution the entity writing the description would have chosen and the one entity translating it into code chose matching perfectly approach zero). It can make sense to trade off some amount of control for productivity, but the tradeoff is inherent as soon as a project moves beyond a single developer hand writing all of the code.

hansmayer 8mo ago
I agree - the whole BS of "Hottest new programming language is English" is complete nonsense. There is something about writing the code directly from your mind that skips over the "language circuits" and makes it much more precise. Perhaps as humans with education we obtain an ability to think in programming language itself I suppose? It's probably similar to what happens in the mind of a composer or painter. This is why the natural language will never be the interface the big "AI" companies are making it to be.

simonw 8mo ago

It's impossible, and yet I experience it on a daily basis. YMMV. I've had a lot of practice at prompting.

hansmayer 8mo ago
> YMMV. I've had a lot of practice at prompting. Ah, the old "you suck at prompting" angle again, isn't it? If you're going to shill this hard, at least come up with something new and original, this is sounding more than desperate.
- simonw 8mo ago
  Most people suck at playing the piano. Most people suck at prompting coding agents. If you practice either of those things you'll get better at them. I really don't understand the "stop telling me I'm holding it wrong" argument. You probably are holding it wrong! Is this born out of some weird belief that "AI" is meant to be science fiction technology that you don't ever need to learn how to use? That would help explain why conversations like this are full of people who claim to get great results and other people who say every time they've tried it the results have been terrible.
  - hansmayer 8mo ago
    > Most people suck at playing the piano. Most people suck at prompting coding agents. If you practice either of those things you'll get better at them. It would be funny, if by now I weren't convinced you are pushing these false analogies on purpose. The key difference between a piano and LLMs being, the piano will produce the same sounds to a same sequence of keys. Every single time. A piano is deterministic. The LLMs are not, and you know it, which makes your constant comparison of deterministic with non-deterministic tools sound a bit dishonest. So please stop using these very weak analogies. > I really don't understand the "stop telling me I'm holding it wrong" argument. You probably are holding it wrong! Right, another weak argument. Writing English language paragraphs is not a science you seem to imply it is. You're not the only person using the LLMs intensively for the last years, and it's not like there this huge secret to using them - after all they use natural language as their primary interface. But that's besides the point. We're not discussing if they are hard or easy to use or whatever. We are discussing if I should replace the magnificent supercomputer already placed in my head by mother nature or God or Aliens or whatever you believe in, for a very shitty, downgraded version 0.0.1 of it sitting in someone's datacenter, all for the sake of sometimes cutting some corners by getting that quick awk/sed oneliner or some boilerplate code? I don't think that's a worthy tradeoff, especially when the relevant reports indicate an objective slowdown, which probably also explains the so-called LLM-fatigue. > Is this born out of some weird belief that "AI" is meant to be science fiction technology that you don't ever need to learn how to use? No, actually it is born out of the weird belief which your sponsors have been either explicitly or implicitly promoting, now for the 4th year, in various intensities and frequencies, that the LLM technology will be equal to a "country of PhDs in a datacenter". All of this based on the super weird transhumanist ideology a lot of the people directly or indirectly sponsoring your writing actively believe in. And whether you like it or not, even if you have never implied the same, you have been a useful helper by providing a more "rational" sounding voice, commenting on the supposed incremental improvements and progress and what not.
lunar_mycroft 8mo ago
What you've experienced is different from what was originally mentioned though. Even with the best human developers, you can't provide a normal natural language prompt and get back the exact code you would have written, because natural language has ambiguities and the probability that the other person (or LLM) will resolve all of them exactly as you would is approaches zero. Collaborating with someone/something else via natural language in a programming project inherently trades control for productivity (or the promise of it). That tradeoff can be worth it depending on how much productivity you gain and how competent the collaborator is, but it can't be avoided.