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ModernMechyesterday at 6:47 PM2 repliesview on HN

Yes, the code is still important. For example, I had tasked Codex to implement function calling in a programming language, and it decided the way to do this was to spin up a brand new sub interpreter on each function call, load a standard library into it, execute the code, destroy the interpreter, and then continue -- despite an already partial and much more efficient solution was already there but in comments. The AI solution "worked", passed all the tests the AI wrote for it, but it was still very very wrong. I had to look at the code to understand it did this. To get it right, you have to either I guess indicate how to implement it, which requires a degree of expertise beyond prompting.


Replies

ai-tameryesterday at 7:20 PM

Do you ask it for a design first? Depending on complexity I ask for a short design doc or a function signature + approach before any code, and only greenlight once it looks sane.

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porridgeraisinyesterday at 6:51 PM

Yep, all models today still need prompting that requires some expertise. Same with context management, it also needs both domain expertise as well as knowing generally how these models work.