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The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

(www.honest-broker.com)
451 points imartin2k | 4 comments | 06 Jul 25 06:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.975s | source
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bsenftner ◴[06 Jul 25 11:17 UTC] No.44479706[source]▶
It's like talking into a void. The issue with AI is that it is too subtle, too easy to get acceptable junk answers and too subtle for the majority to realize we've made a universal crib sheet, software developers included, perhaps one of the worst populations due to their extremely weak communications as a community. To be repeatedly successful with AI, one has to exert mental effort to prompt AI effectively, but pretty much nobody is willing to even consider that. Attempts to discuss the language aspects of using an LLM get ridiculed as 'prompt engineer is not engineering' and dismissed, while that is exactly what it is: prompt engineering using a new software language, natural language, that the industry refuses to take seriously, but is in fact an extremely technical programming language so subtle few to none of you realize it, nor the power that is embodied by it within LLMs. They are incredible, they are subtle, to the degree the majority think they are fraud.
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20k ◴[06 Jul 25 11:57 UTC] No.44479955[source]▶
The issue is that you have to put in more effort to solve a problem using AI, than to just solve it yourself

If I have to do extensive subtle prompt engineering and use a lot of mental effort to solve my problem... I'll just solve the problem instead. Programming is a mental discipline - I don't need help typing, and if using an AI means putting in more brainpower, its fundamentally failed at improving my ability to engineer software

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handfuloflight ◴[06 Jul 25 14:17 UTC] No.44481015[source]▶
This overlooks a new category of developer who operates in natural language, not in syntax.
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1. goatlover ◴[06 Jul 25 15:11 UTC] No.44481411[source]▶
So they don't understand the syntax being generated for them?
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2. handfuloflight ◴[06 Jul 25 16:03 UTC] No.44481882[source]▶
They don't need to, any more than syntax writers need to understand byte code.

They need to understand what the code does.

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3. goatlover ◴[06 Jul 25 21:40 UTC] No.44484330[source]▶
I have a hard time believing any of these natural language only prompters are being hired as developers if they don't understand the syntax. Part of the issue is LLMs are indeterministic and hallucinate. They also don't recognize every bug they generate.
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4. handfuloflight ◴[06 Jul 25 21:50 UTC] No.44484407{3}[source]▶
https://clickup.com/careers?gh_jid=5505998004

I don't agree with the vibe coding methodology (or lack thereof) myself but here's a direct lowest common denominator counterexample of a natural language programming job position.

In practice, we are seeing and will continue to see developer adjacent positions submitting PRs. Not on a whim but after having understood the codebase or parts of it using the AI to translate syntax to English.