alt Hacker NewsWhat makes this anecdote hard to believe is that seemingly two things happened simultaneously:
1. The layperson was able to to steer the session(-s) into full PM/PO mode ideating, refining and explaining features and ideas.
2. The user was the sycophant in this relationship, never steering the session(-s) into producing something tangible.
The premise supposes that somehow the session(-s) never even tangentially touched implementation/deployment ideas and the user has never typed something like "that's enough, how to make this appear in my browser?". While not impossible, the user must have been proactively co-operating (say sidetracked) on not achieving the stated goal.
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Indeed. It reads like software engineer employment cope by appealing to the lowest common denominator possible. As if solutions for that type of end user weren't already solved for over a decade ago, most of which now have agents built in.
It just is not believable or interesting. Even if it did happen, the reality is it just doesn't matter.
> What makes this anecdote hard to believe is that seemingly two things happened simultaneously
What i described is what happened. I don’t appreciate the undertones where you are insinuating that i’m lying for whatever reason.
> The layperson was able to to steer the session(-s) into full PM/PO mode ideating, refining and explaining features and ideas
You call it steering. I would call it falling into that grove. Probably tiny things in the initial message made the first response more likely to be a clarifying/ideating type. And once that happened the conversation was gaining momentum in that direction and neither participant was trying to guide it in a different one.
> the user must have been proactively co-operating (say sidetracked) on not achieving the stated goal.
Exactly. The LLM itself sidetracked her. They were just talking about cool features they could add, and at no point did she put down her feet and say “stop asking more questions and just write the code”.
It can be a combination of many things. Attitude (some people hate to be rude, and not answering a question feels a bit rude). It can also be that she enjoyed the process of unpacking and elaborating on the idea.
The meaning of the story is not that no lay person can possibly develop using AI. That would be silly, and untrue. I know clear counter examples. The point is that if you don’t know what you don’t know it is harder to steer the AI in the direction you could very easily with the right lingo.