https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2023\/11\/20\/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft<\/a><\/p>\n(…)<\/p>\n
In a 1978 essay titled \u201cOn the Foolishness of \u2018Natural Language Programming,\u2019 \u201d the computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra argued that if you were to instruct computers not in a specialized language like C++ or Python but in your native tongue you\u2019d be rejecting the very precision that made computers useful. Formal programming languages, he wrote, are \u201can amazingly effective tool for ruling out all sorts of nonsense that, when we use our native tongues, are almost impossible to avoid.\u201d Dijkstra\u2019s argument became a truism in programming circles. When the essay made the rounds on Reddit in 2014, a top commenter wrote, \u201cI\u2019m not sure which of the following is scariest. Just how trivially obvious this idea is\u201d or the fact that \u201cmany still do not know it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I first used GPT-4, I could see what Dijkstra was talking about. You can\u2019t just say to the A.I., \u201cSolve my problem.\u201d That day may come, but for now it is more like an instrument you must learn to play. You have to specify what you want carefully, as though talking to a beginner. In the search-highlighting problem, I found myself asking GPT-4 to do too much at once, watching it fail, and then starting over. Each time, my prompts became less ambitious. By the end of the conversation, I wasn\u2019t talking about search or highlighting; I had broken the problem into specific, abstract, unambiguous sub-problems that, together, would give me what I wanted.<\/p>\n
Having found the A.I.\u2019s level, I felt almost instantly that my working life had been transformed. Everywhere I looked I could see GPT-4-size holes; I understood, finally, why the screens around the office were always filled with chat sessions\u2014and how Ben had become so productive. I opened myself up to trying it more often….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
*I would recommend reading that, because the secondary and tertiary effects of this are just beginning. *Also, archiving today’s digital crafts that will be swiftly forgotten, that will be quite an interesting challenge, much like preserving silent film. https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2023\/11\/20\/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft (…) In a 1978 essay titled \u201cOn the Foolishness of \u2018Natural Language Programming,\u2019 \u201d the computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"yoast_head":"\n
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