The bigger surprise here is the test sample of experienced software developers "expected AI to expedite their work and increase productivity". Perhaps a more scientifically selected sample would have yielded a more scientifically valid result.
Just using AI to write boilerplate with a simple "Do what I did for this for these" request and it's like what I hoped The Future would be, 5 years ago. It's great !
But get over-ambitious with your requests and you get over-complex almost-solutions that, indeed, take up all your time to fix and I find this takes all the fun out of development - you have to restart coding something from scratch that you had "almost" finished a day ago.
But when you get to know the AI's limits, it is definitely a time-saver.
Hmm, I think I will trademark "Over-complex almost-solutions".
Have you first asked the bot if the request is overambitious? :)
> But when you get to know the AI's limits
That would be when you know whether its output can be trusted, right? And there's the problem. Software is way beyond the point where product can be adequately proved. We rely on process control. And stochastic parroting does not cut it.
Exactly this; for some tasks, it can speed up you dramatically, 5 - 10 x; with others, it actually makes you slower.
And yes, very often writing a prompt + verifying results and possible modifying them and/or following-up takes longer than just writing code from scratch, manually ;)
The bigger surprise here is the test sample of experienced software developers "expected AI to expedite their work and increase productivity". Perhaps a more scientifically selected sample would have yielded a more scientifically valid result.
[flagged]
I concur.
Just using AI to write boilerplate with a simple "Do what I did for this for these" request and it's like what I hoped The Future would be, 5 years ago. It's great !
But get over-ambitious with your requests and you get over-complex almost-solutions that, indeed, take up all your time to fix and I find this takes all the fun out of development - you have to restart coding something from scratch that you had "almost" finished a day ago.
But when you get to know the AI's limits, it is definitely a time-saver.
Hmm, I think I will trademark "Over-complex almost-solutions".
> But get over-ambitious with your requests
Have you first asked the bot if the request is overambitious? :)
> But when you get to know the AI's limits
That would be when you know whether its output can be trusted, right? And there's the problem. Software is way beyond the point where product can be adequately proved. We rely on process control. And stochastic parroting does not cut it.
I suspect the AI-Dunning-Kruger effect would come into play.
Exactly this; for some tasks, it can speed up you dramatically, 5 - 10 x; with others, it actually makes you slower.
And yes, very often writing a prompt + verifying results and possible modifying them and/or following-up takes longer than just writing code from scratch, manually ;)