this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Do you have the email address of this devil guy? I'd like to chat.

[–] lowleveldata 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hi this is the devil guy. Just catch and swallow all exceptions and you're golden.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Sorry, I don't swallow on the first date.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Ah, so you are the guy who created "On Error Resume Next" in Visual Basic and populated it in the beginning of every function in my company's code! I hate you!

[–] lowleveldata 11 points 7 months ago

Yes. I am become tech debt, the devourer of mandays.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

“On Error Resume Next” in Visual Basic

This is always presented as the worst thing about Visual Basic, which is incorrect. The worst thing was "On Error Resume" which just re-executed the line that caused the error in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I will keep this knowledge a closely guarded secret.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago

I never, ever hated my job as a programmer as much as when I was forced to do pair programming. If I'd wanted to be around another person all day, I never would have become a programmer in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)

They forgot vasking an llm for help fixing it for them.

[–] snaggen 45 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I actually asked chatGPT about a specific issue I had and solved a while back. It was one of these issues where it looked like a simple naive solution would be sufficient, but due to different conditions that fails, you have to go with a more complex solution. So, I asked about this to see what it would answer. And it went with the simpler solution, but with some adjustments. The code also didn't compile. But it looked interesting enough, for me to question my self. Maybe it was just me that failed the simpler solution, so I actually tried to fix the compile errors to see if I could get it working. But the more I tried to fix its code the more obvious it got that it didn't have a clue about what it was doing. However, due to the confidence and ability to make things look plausible, it sent me on a wild goose chase. And this is why I am not using LLM for programming. They are basically overconfident junior devs, that likes mansplaining.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's not always right but it saves me tonnes of time at work, usually when I want to do something simple in a language or environment I'm not totally familiar with.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

It can reliably copy the simple things in it's training data from stackoverflow.

But at that point, why not just go to stackoverflow instead?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I find that sometimes I can’t quite describe the problem well enough for google to find results. The conversational nature of ChatGPT means I usually can get a good enough answer from it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying it's going to take anyone's job anytime soon but it's a lot quicker to get something tailor made for your problem than going to stack overflow. Everyone should use the tools that work for them but don't sleep on this stuff, like any tool it's really helpful once you know how to use it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. But I think it is utterly useless if you aren't experienced enough to tell if it is bullshitting. Almost every time I have asked for a little adjustment, it just makes something up that looks good on first glance. My favorite is when it invents python libraries that magically handle all the difficult stuff. But man is it useful for my crappy little bash scripts or regex.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Absolutely true. I think regex might be one of my favourite uses to be honest. Both in writing them and explaining wth an existing one is doing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Gpt4 is pretty awesome for simple stuff. I've just started learning python (Knowing no other language) and made my first project a pyqt GUI for editing the config of a FOSS project. It's reasoning ability is not great, but when you clearly lay out what you want to do, how you want to do it, it because a fantastic natural language to code interpreter. All the fiddly bits I dread typing out I just pop into gpt 3.5, and more complicated stuff gpt4.

I have learned a lot from debugging whenever it gets stuck, and being able to create an actual usable program right from the start is awesome.

Even better is slowly realizing you are understanding what's going on, and the dread of actually studying to learn the language becomes a genuine desire to learn more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It has encouraged my colleagues to get answers from it that would be easily available with a google search (and by asking me - my fault for acting like they are a pita for not extrapolating from previous explanations). Resulting in:

  1. Trying to sudo apt install on a RHEL system
    • Looking for an apt RPM package on the internet
  2. Looking for RPM packages of almost every unavailable thingy on the internet.
  3. In general, succeeding 90% at a task (not 90% of the times, but 90% part of it) and going with it. Only to later realise the remaining 10% invalidated all their effort.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I don't do it enough, but I do enjoy using it (it being perplexity.ai) for getting code examples of stuff I'm always looking up over and over. A YAML sample of a Cloudformation or CDL snippet for a very specifically configured resource. A YAML sample of an Ansible module that does a thing. A Python sample of a specific lambda method. A regex for email addresses.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

When I was a kid, I programmed a jump and run game and each time I found a bug, I made a new level in which you needed to use it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I love the little bug holding up the stick supporting everything in the stack overflow.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

That's exactly what I was reminded of. There truly is an xkcd for everything.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Sometimes I feel like the only non-tech worker on Lemmy. This place desperately needs more diversity

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That’s a normal consequence of more tech-savvy people leaving Reddit than others. Just gotta wait for spez to mess it up even more and we’ll get a wider variety of people here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Oh boy, can't wait for even more neoliberals to have such bold takes as "hmmm, both sides are bad, AKSHUALLY"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

This is a small niche site after all - logging in requires knowing about its existance - and reddit is very popular, but not in a good way. Even in disagreement, I have not found that level of hostility here. At some point reddit was starting to become a dead weight in my life, incapable of giving me unique informations.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Be the change you want to see.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I hear you. Cheers

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Encourage your other non-tech friends and colleagues to join a Lemmy instance then. The fediverse hasn’t gotten big enough and normal people haven’t really gotten to the level of technical literacy yet to be able to come here organically yet

We are here because we are nerds that already care about FOSS.

[–] Gingernate 4 points 7 months ago

I'm a diesel technician haha

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is missing printf debugging.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

Console is a log "file" on Linux. You could tail your pty if you really wanted to...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Where's the console.log('here') ? That would be the equivalent of a "you are here" on a map.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

git bisect is just this guy jumping through portals to alternate universes where the bug either exists or doesn’t

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago

this is so deaf people know what the words sound like?