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Getting AI to write good SQL

(cloud.google.com)
477 points richards | 1 comments | 16 May 25 21:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.314s | source
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pcblues ◴[17 May 25 13:21 UTC] No.44014141[source]▶
Can someone please answer these questions because I still think AI stinks of a false promise of determinable accuracy:

Do you need an expert to verify if the answer from AI is correct? How is it time saved refining prompts instead of SQL? Is it typing time? How can you know the results are correct if you aren't able to do it yourself? Why should a junior (sorcerer's apprentice) be trusted in charge of using AI? No matter the domain, from art to code to business rules, you still need an expert to verify the results. Would they (and their company) be in a better place to design a solution to a problem themselves, knowing their own assumptions? Or just check of a list of happy-path results without a FULL knowledge of the underlying design? This is not just a change from hand-crafting to line-production, it's a change from deterministic problem-solving to near-enough is good enough, sold as the new truth in problem-solving. It smells wrong.

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neRok ◴[17 May 25 15:31 UTC] No.44015021[source]▶
I've recently started asking the free version of chat-gpt questions on how I might do various things, and it's working great for me - but also my questions come from a POV of having existing "domain knowledge".

So for example, I was mucking around with ffmpeg and mkv files, and instead of searching for the answer to my thought-bubble (which I doubt would have been "quick" or "productive" on google), I straight up asked it what I wanted to know;

  > are there any features for mkv files like what ffmpeg does when making mp4 files with the option `--movflags faststart`?
And it gave me a great answer!

  (...the answer happened to be based upon our prior conversation of av1 encoding, and so it told me about increasing the I-frame frequency).
Another example from today - I was trying to build mp4v2 but ran in to drama because I don't want to take the easy road and install all the programs needed to "build" (I've taken to doing my hobby-coding as if I'm on a corporate-PC without admin rights (windows)). I also don't know about "cmake" and stuff, but I went and downloaded the portable zip and moved the exe to my `%user-path%/tools/` folder, but it gave an error. I did a quick search, but the google results were grim, so I went to chat-gpt. I said;

  > I'm trying to build this project off github, but I don't have cmake installed because I can't, so I'm using a portable version. It's giving me this error though: [*error*]
And the aforementioned error was pretty generic, but chat-gpt still gave a fantastic response along the lines of;

  >  Ok, first off, you must not have all the files that cmake.exe needs in the same folder, so to fix do ..[stuff, including explicit powershell commands to set PATH variables, as I had told it I was using powershell before].
  >  And once cmake is fixed, you still need [this and that].
  >  For [this], and because you want portable, here's how to setup Ninja [...]
  >  For [that], and even though you said you dont want to install things, you might consider ..[MSVC instructions].
  >  If not, you can ..[mingw-w64 instructions].
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1. neRok ◴[17 May 25 15:56 UTC] No.44015183[source]▶
[Going to give myself a self-reply here, but what-ev's. This is how I talk to chat-gpt, FYI]... So I happened to be shopping for a cheap used car recently, and we have these ~15 year old Ford SUV's in Aus that are comfortable, but heavy and thirsty. Also, they come in AWD and RWD versions. So I had a thought bubble about using an AWD "gearbox" in a RWD vehicle whilst connecting an electric motor to the AWD front "output", so that it could work as an assist. Here was my first question to chat-gpt about it;

  > I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to add an electric-assist motor to an existing petrol vehicle. There are some 2010 era SUV's that have relatively uneconomical petrol engines, which may be good candidates. That is because some of them are RWD, whilst some are AWD. The AWD gearbox and transfer case could be fitted to the RWD, leaving the transfers front "output" unconnected. Could an electric motor then be connected to this shaft, hence making it an input?
It gave a decent answer, but it was focused on the "front diff" and "front driveshaft" and stuff like that. It hadn't quite grasped what I was implying, although it knew what it was talking about! It brought up various things that I knew were relevant (the "domain knowledge" aspect), so I brought some of those things in my reply (like about the viscous coupling and torque split);

  > I mentioned the AWD gearbox+transfer into a RWD-only vehicle, thus keeping it RWD only. Thus both petrol+electric would be "driving" at the same time, but I imagine the electric would reduce the effort required from the petrol. The transfer case is a simple "differential" type, without any control or viscous couplings or anything - just simple gear ratio differences that normally torque-split 35% to the front and 65% to the rear. So I imagine the open-differential would handle the 2 different input speeds could "combine" to 1 output?
That was enough to "fix" its answer (see below). And IMO, it was a good answer!

I'm posting this because I read a thread on here yesterday/2-days-ago about people stuggling with their AI's context/conversation getting "poisoned" (their word). So whilst I don't use AI that much, I also haven't had issue with it, and maybe that's because of that way I converse with it?

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"Edit": Well, the conversation was too long for HN, so I put it here - https://gist.github.com/neRok00/53e97988e1a3e41f3a688a75fe3b...