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Comment by luckilydiscrete

1 day ago

I'll say "maybe-sometimes works" is a misunderstanding.

It feels like that initially, but that's no different from any new tool you adopt. A jackhammer also "maybe-sometimes works" as a hammer replacement.

Not true, most tools are deterministic. For instance my programming language LSP just works 100% of the time with no failure. It doesn’t hallucinate any types, methods or variables.

Every prompt is a run of probability - It’s at the core of the technology to be unable to give reproducible responses and even after a while, Claude is just as likely to sneak-in crimes in every snippet it outputs.

  • > Every prompt is a run of probability - It’s at the core of the technology to be unable to give reproducible responses and even after a while, Claude is just as likely to sneak-in crimes in every snippet it outputs.

    Some readers might interpret "a run of probability" to mean "we can't say anything about the statistical distribution". I don't think the commenter means that, but still, communicating statistics is hard, so I suggest being careful.

    For example, writing "even after a while, just as likely to sneak-in crimes in every snippet it outputs" is pretty attention-getting and even provoking. What does the commenter mean by it? What kind of 'crimes' do they mean? Does the commenter really mean 'just as likely'? Just as likely as what? I would think most readers would form very different takes.

Completely depends on your domain. TypeScript web dev? Very good experience for a lot of tasks. Minecraft mod development? Don’t waste your time.

I only have a few experiences to pull from so if anyone else has good data points give them.