Comment by seanmcdirmid
2 days ago
Pity, prompt engineering is just another kind of programming, I find it to be fun, but I guess lots of other people would see it differently.
2 days ago
Pity, prompt engineering is just another kind of programming, I find it to be fun, but I guess lots of other people would see it differently.
The venn diagram of engineering and prompting is two circles, maybe a tiny overlap with integrated environments like claude code.
A program, by definition, is analyzable and repeatable, whereas prompting is anything but that.
As long as your program is large and multi-threaded (most programs that matter commercially), it is not very analyzable or repeatable. You replace those qualities with QA and tests, the same is true with prompting.
Sounds like it's time for your LLM daddy to have the Coq talk with you..
Eve if "write code -> run QA -> analyze failures -> rewrite code" is cheaper for most commercial software than thorough upfront formal verification, it works precisely because the programs are analyzable.
When the code spit out by an LLM does not pass QA one can merely add "pls fix teh program, bro, pls no mistakes this time, bro, kthxbye", cross their fingers and hope for the best, because in the end it is impossible -- fundamentally -- to determine which part of the prompt produced offending code.
While it is indeed an interesting observation that the latter approaches commercial viability in certain areas there is still somewhere between zero and infinitesimal overlap between prompting and engineering.
3 replies →
Indeed it is another kind of programming, I simply don't enjoy it.
But it is also very early to say, maybe the next iteration of tools will completely change my perspective, I might enjoy it some day!
Programming without flow state. Nice.