Episode Details

Bryan and Adam and the Oxide Friends take on GPT and its implications for software engineering. Many aspiring programmers are concerned that the future of the profession is in jeopardy. Spoiler: the Oxide Friends see a bright future for human/GPT collaboration in software engineering.

We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from March 20th, 2023.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on MM DD included Josh Clulow, Keith Adams, Ashley Williams, and others. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)

Live chat from the show (lightly edited):

• ahl: John Carmack's tweet
• ahl: ...and the discussion
• Wizord: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1636797265317867520 (the $1M bet on BTC, I take)
• dataphract: "prompt engineering" as in "social engineering" rather than "civil engineering"
• Grevian: I was surprised at how challenging getting good prompts could be, even if I wouldn't quite label it engineering
• TronDD: https://www.aiweirdness.com/search-or-fabrication/
• MattCampbell: I tested ChatGPT in an area where I have domain expertise, and it got it very wrong.
• TronDD: Also interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhJbKBuNnA
• Wizord: the question is, when will it be in competition with people?
• Wizord: copilot also can review code and find bugs if you ask it in a right way
• ag_dubs: i suspect that a new job will be building tools that help make training sets better and i strongly suspect that will be a programming job. ai will need tools and data and content and there's just a whole bunch of jobs to build tools for AI instead of people
• Wizord: re "reading manual and writing DTrace scripts" I think it's possible, if done with a large enough token window.
• Wizord: (there are already examples of GPT debugging code, although trivial ones)
• flaviusb: The chat here is really interesting to me, as it seems to miss the point of the thing. ChatGPT does not and can not ever 'actually work' - and whether it works is kind of irrelevant. Like, the Jaquard Looms and Numerical Control for machining did not 'work', but that didn't stop the roll out.
• Columbus: Maybe it has read the dtrace manual 😉
• JustinAzoff: I work with a "long tail" language, and chatgpt sure is good at generating code that LOOKS like it might work, but is usually completely wrong
• clairegiordano: Some definite fans of DTrace on this show
• ag_dubs: a thing i want to chat about is how GPT can affect the "pace" of software development
• sudomateo: I also think it's a lot less than 100% of engineers that engage in code review.
• Wizord: yes, I've had some good experience with using copilot for code review
• ag_dubs: chatgpt is good at things that are already established... its not good at new things, or things that were just published