The “correct” way to use AI for coding (and anything really) is to ask for explanations / tutorials when you can’t find one online, then learn from that.
Never let it do something for you. That’s how you lose. If you’re not actively learning, you’re actively rotting, and that goes for life in general too.
The “correct” way to use AI for coding (and anything really) is to ask for explanations / tutorials when you can’t find one online, then learn from that.
except the “explanation” frequently will be 100% “hallucinated” bullshit
For what it’s worth, I’ve been working on (yet another) ActivityPub based micro blogging application and LLMs have been enormously helpful and so far as I can tell, correct. Often it cites the AP specs and its extensions, as well as specific implementations from existing major AP apps. It can show me expected outputs, what responses from my app should look like in response to different requests from other servers, and quickly give context for features like Mastodon’s shared inbox. I’m not having it simply generate code, but I think I’m still moving way faster than I otherwise could. I don’t recall it ever giving me incorrect information.
It’s the first time I’ve used an LLM as a tool this way, and I’m pretty impressed with it. I’m using the assistant made available through Kagi.
Tip: check those citations yourself before publishing with your name on the product. Yeah, they’re usually correct - do you only usually not want to be perceived as a lazy idiot?
I get that. I wouldn’t publish the code anywhere until an alpha is more or less ready and pretty well tested, and yes, I understand the importance of making sure it behaves in an expected, performant and pro-social manner with the existing compatible fediverse apps.
I’m not too worried about it, but thanks for your genuine concern about my reputation. ;) Since I’m the one writing the code, I’m more worried about the quality of that, if anything.
That’s why I always ask it to cite sources. Basically googld ATP since google is turning to shit and all other search engines still aren’t quite as good
It could very easily use a completely different or hallucinated source.
But a lot of LLM products are now providing source links right in the response. I’ve found them useful, and hopefully they aren’t produced just by feeding the text back in and asking for a link.
What you said is fine for people learning, but there’s nothing wrong with having AI do something for you when you’ve done it a hundred times and don’t want to do it again. Some of us are actually out here working, not just learning.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, if you can’t find an explanation online that means that there’s not much info available in which case the best thing would be to ask on a forum, that way other people that look for that info will find it.
Not really, google results have been just that bad for the last 10 years. I can spend 10min looking for a piece of documentation on something and not find it. Or I can prompt an internet-connected AI and have it spit out links to relevant docs. It’s gotten THAT bad.
The “correct” way to use AI for coding (and anything really) is to ask for explanations / tutorials when you can’t find one online, then learn from that.
Never let it do something for you. That’s how you lose. If you’re not actively learning, you’re actively rotting, and that goes for life in general too.
except the “explanation” frequently will be 100% “hallucinated” bullshit
For what it’s worth, I’ve been working on (yet another) ActivityPub based micro blogging application and LLMs have been enormously helpful and so far as I can tell, correct. Often it cites the AP specs and its extensions, as well as specific implementations from existing major AP apps. It can show me expected outputs, what responses from my app should look like in response to different requests from other servers, and quickly give context for features like Mastodon’s shared inbox. I’m not having it simply generate code, but I think I’m still moving way faster than I otherwise could. I don’t recall it ever giving me incorrect information.
It’s the first time I’ve used an LLM as a tool this way, and I’m pretty impressed with it. I’m using the assistant made available through Kagi.
Tip: check those citations yourself before publishing with your name on the product. Yeah, they’re usually correct - do you only usually not want to be perceived as a lazy idiot?
I get that. I wouldn’t publish the code anywhere until an alpha is more or less ready and pretty well tested, and yes, I understand the importance of making sure it behaves in an expected, performant and pro-social manner with the existing compatible fediverse apps.
I’m not too worried about it, but thanks for your genuine concern about my reputation. ;) Since I’m the one writing the code, I’m more worried about the quality of that, if anything.
That’s why I always ask it to cite sources. Basically googld ATP since google is turning to shit and all other search engines still aren’t quite as good
It could very easily use a completely different or hallucinated source.
But a lot of LLM products are now providing source links right in the response. I’ve found them useful, and hopefully they aren’t produced just by feeding the text back in and asking for a link.
That’s exactly how those links are produced.
What you said is fine for people learning, but there’s nothing wrong with having AI do something for you when you’ve done it a hundred times and don’t want to do it again. Some of us are actually out here working, not just learning.
We already invented a tool for that, it’s called a library.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, if you can’t find an explanation online that means that there’s not much info available in which case the best thing would be to ask on a forum, that way other people that look for that info will find it.
Not really, google results have been just that bad for the last 10 years. I can spend 10min looking for a piece of documentation on something and not find it. Or I can prompt an internet-connected AI and have it spit out links to relevant docs. It’s gotten THAT bad.