This is what it is called a programming language, it only exists to be able to tell the machine what to do in an unambiguous (in contrast to natural language) way.
This reminds me of a colleague who was always ranting that our code was not documented well enough. He did not understand that documenting code in easily understandable sentences for everybody would fill whole books and that a normal person would not be able to keep the code path in his mental stack while reading page after page. Then he wanted at least the shortest possible summary of the code, which of course is the code itself.
The guy basically did not want to read the code to understand the logic behind. When I took an hour and literally read the code for him and explained what I was reading including the well placed comments here and there everything was clear.
AI is like this in my opinion. Some guys waste hours to generate code they can’t debug for days because they don’t understand what they read, while it would take maybe two hours to think and a day to implement and test to get the job done.
I don’t like this trend. It’s like the people that can’t read docs or texts anymore. They need some random person making a 43 minute YouTube video to write code they don’t understand. Taking shortcuts in life usually never goes well in the long run. You have to learn and refine your skills each and every day to be and stay competent.
AI is a tool in our toolbox. You can use it to be more productive. And that’s it.
This goes for most LLM things. The time it takes to get the word calculator to write a letter would have been easily used to just write the damn letter.
I think there might be a lot of value in describing it to an AI, though. It takes a fair bit of clarity of thought to get something resembling what you actually want. You could use a junior or rubber duck instead, but the rubber duck doesn’t make stupid assumptions to demonstrate gaps in your thought process, and a junior takes too long and gets demoralized when you have to constantly revise their instructions and iterate over their work.
Like the output might be garbage, but it might really help you write those stories.
When I’m struggling with a problem it helps me to explain it to my dog.
It’s great for me to hear it out loud and if he’s paying attention, I’ve got a needlessly learned dog!
Yeah, in the time I describe the problem to the AI I could program it myself.
This is what it is called a programming language, it only exists to be able to tell the machine what to do in an unambiguous (in contrast to natural language) way.
Ugh I can’t find the xkcd about this where the guy goes, “you know what we call precisely written requirements? Code” or something like that
Not xkcd in this case
https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensive-and-precise-spec/
This reminds me of a colleague who was always ranting that our code was not documented well enough. He did not understand that documenting code in easily understandable sentences for everybody would fill whole books and that a normal person would not be able to keep the code path in his mental stack while reading page after page. Then he wanted at least the shortest possible summary of the code, which of course is the code itself.
The guy basically did not want to read the code to understand the logic behind. When I took an hour and literally read the code for him and explained what I was reading including the well placed comments here and there everything was clear.
AI is like this in my opinion. Some guys waste hours to generate code they can’t debug for days because they don’t understand what they read, while it would take maybe two hours to think and a day to implement and test to get the job done.
I don’t like this trend. It’s like the people that can’t read docs or texts anymore. They need some random person making a 43 minute YouTube video to write code they don’t understand. Taking shortcuts in life usually never goes well in the long run. You have to learn and refine your skills each and every day to be and stay competent.
AI is a tool in our toolbox. You can use it to be more productive. And that’s it.
This goes for most LLM things. The time it takes to get the word calculator to write a letter would have been easily used to just write the damn letter.
I think there might be a lot of value in describing it to an AI, though. It takes a fair bit of clarity of thought to get something resembling what you actually want. You could use a junior or rubber duck instead, but the rubber duck doesn’t make stupid assumptions to demonstrate gaps in your thought process, and a junior takes too long and gets demoralized when you have to constantly revise their instructions and iterate over their work.
Like the output might be garbage, but it might really help you write those stories.
When I’m struggling with a problem it helps me to explain it to my dog. It’s great for me to hear it out loud and if he’s paying attention, I’ve got a needlessly learned dog!
The needlessly learned dogs are flooding the job market!