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Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

(danieldelaney.net)
858 points cryptophreak | 4 comments | 04 Feb 25 16:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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croes ◴[04 Feb 25 16:22 UTC] No.42934439[source]▶
Natural language isn’t made to be precise that’s why we use a subset in programming languages.

So you either need lots of extra text to remove the ambiguity of natural language if you use AI or you need a special precise subset to communicate with AI and that’s just programming with extra steps.

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empath75 ◴[04 Feb 25 16:28 UTC] No.42934537[source]▶
AIs actually are very good at this. They wouldn't be able to write code at all otherwise. If you're careful in your prompting, they'll make fewer assumptions and ask clarifying questions before going ahead and writing code.
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1. oxfordmale ◴[04 Feb 25 16:40 UTC] No.42934744[source]▶
AI is very good at this. Unfortunately, humans tend to be super bad at providing detailed verbal instructions.
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2. indymike ◴[04 Feb 25 16:46 UTC] No.42934864[source]▶
Languages used for day to day communication between humans do not have the specificity needed for detailed instructions... even to other humans. We out of band context (body language, social norms, tradition, knowledge of a person) quite a bit more than you would think.
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3. nomel ◴[04 Feb 25 21:03 UTC] No.42938638[source]▶
Then those same humans won't be able to reason about code, or the problem spaces they're working in, regardless, since it's all fundamentally about precise specifics.
4. nomel ◴[04 Feb 25 21:04 UTC] No.42938663[source]▶
Programming languages, which are human language, are purpose built for this. Anyone working in the domain of precise specifications uses them, or something very similar (for example, engineering, writing contracts, etc), often daily. ;)

They all usually build down to a subset of english, because near caveman speak is enough to define things with precision.