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>It takes care and careful engineering to produce good results. One must work to keep the models within the flight envelope. One has to carefully structure the
by andai 8mo ago
>It takes care and careful engineering to produce good results. One must work to keep the models within the flight envelope. One has to carefully structure the problem, provide the right context and guidance, and give appropriate tools and a good environment. One must think about optimizing the context window; one must be aware of its limitations.
In other words, one has to lean into the exact opposite tendencies of those which generally make people reach for AI ;)
- throwaway27448 8mo agoI'm not sure there is a "normal" tendency to reach for AI. But there is certainly parallel in that, say, javascript and PHP have a reputation of being preferred by barely able people who make interesting and useful things with atrocious code.
- drzaiusx11 8mo agoI've seen rust codebases that would make you cry along with perfectly well architected applications written in both perl and php. You're just playing into common language silo stereotypes. A competent developer can author code in their language of choice whatever that may be. I'm not sure "reaching for AI" implies anything besides that some folk prefer that tool for their work. I personally don't have a tendency to reach for AI, but that doesn't somehow imply they or I are "lesser" because of it.
- whattheheckheck 8mo agoIt does to executives who sign the checks to ai usage contracts
- drzaiusx11 8mo agoThe implication being that execs want folks who "reach for AI" to meet some arbitrary contract targets? Sounds like optimizing for the wrong things but I've seen crazier schemes. In my opinion the end goal of those execs pushing AI is the age old goal of seizing the means of production (of software in this case) by reducing the worker to a machine. It'll likely play out in their favor honestly, as it has many times in the past.
- throwaway27448 8mo agoI don't know what an AI usage contract is but it sounds like corporate suicide.
- throwaway27448 8mo ago> You're just playing into common language silo stereotypes. Yes, the stereotype is what I brought up on purpose. > A competent developer can author code in their language of choice whatever that may be. I'm not sure "reaching for AI" implies anything besides that some folk prefer that tool for their work. More relevantly, a competent developer can use AI just like one can use PHP. It buys enormous value in the short term. > I personally don't have a tendency to reach for AI, but that doesn't somehow imply they or I are "lesser" because of it. Yes, just like people who use PHP can make excellent programs. Nobody in this conversation implied anyone was lesser than another.
- drzaiusx11 8mo agoSo you're saying reputations of "atrociousness" in both cases (AI users and implied poor quality producing software devs) aren't warranted? That wasn't clear in your post (at least to me.) Simply pointing out a correlation of negative stereotypes without refuting evidence just helps reinforce them.
- andai 8mo agoI made a similar point on a different thread, saying of course it's possible to make reliable, performant code in just about any language. Of course it's possible, (computers are very fast in this century!), it's just that the kind of people who prioritize that, don't tend to use those languages! (There's lunatics like me who take pride in shipping eight kilobyte browser games. But not many, I suspect ;)