Personally I think this is an extreme waste of time. Every week you're learning something new that is already outdated the next week. You're telling me AI can write complex code but isn't able to figure out how to properly guide the user into writing usable prompts?

A somewhat intelligent junior will dive deep for one week and be on the same knowledge level as you in roughly 3 years.

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simonw 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No matter how good AI gets we will never be in a situation where a person with poor communication skills will be able to use it as effectively as someone who's communication skills are razor sharp.

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q3k 12 hours ago | parent [-]

But the examples you've posted have nothing to do with communication skills, they're just hacks to get particular tools to work better for you, and those will change whenever the next model/service decides to do things differently.

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zahlman 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm generally skeptical of Simon's specific line of argument here, but I'm inclined to agree with the point about communication skill.

In particular, the idea of saying something like "use red/green TDD" is an expression of communication skill (and also, of course, awareness of software methodology jargon).

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habinero 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Ehhh, I don't know. "Communication" is for sapients. I'd call that "knowing the right keywords".

And if the hype is right, why would you need to know any of them? I've seen people unironically suggest telling the LLM to "write good code", which seems even easier.

	▲	zahlman 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I sympathize with your view on a philosophical level, but the consequence is really a meaningless semantic argument. The point is that prompting the AI with words that you'd actually use when asking a human to perform the task, generally works better than trying to "guess the password" that will magically get optimum performance out of the AI. Telling an intern to care about code quality might actually cause an intern who hasn't been caring about code quality to care a little bit more. But it isn't going to help the intern understand the intended purpose of the software.

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simonw 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm going to resist the temptation to spend more time coming up with more examples. I'm sorry those weren't to your liking!

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danielmarkbruce 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Why do you bother with all this discussion? Like, I get it the first x times for some low x, it's fun to have the discussion. But after a while, aren't you just tired of the people who keep pushing back? You are right, they are wrong. It's obvious to anyone who has put the effort in.

	▲	peteforde an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Trying to have a discussion with people who aren't actually interested in being convinced is exhausting. Simon has a lot more patience than I do.

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habinero 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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