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A comment on Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil? by wg0 on Saturday April 22, 2023 @11:05AM (#35667286)
I personally do not think Software engineering is a thing. There are opinions on how to structure Software even within same language and framework and there's little objective procedure to rate one way better that the other and there's one, that kind of performance gains usually are negligible.

But prompt engineering? Based on what knowledge exactly?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil? by TheOtherHobbes on Saturday April 22, 2023 @11:48AM (#35667750)
Software engineering is definitely a thing. There are numerous ways to code robustly and to prove the software will do what it's supposed to. They're much used in mission-critical applications where failure is a Very Bad Thing.

But most developers do none of these things, and many developers don't even know they exist.

But prompt engineering is just search++. You might save some time if you know a little about the underlying technology, and there's an element of creativity which is unusual for search.

But it's still not rocket surgery.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil? by prisonguard on Saturday April 22, 2023 @03:47PM (#35670287)
> But most developers do none of these things

When they should, failure cost time/money

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil? by barbariangrunge on Saturday April 22, 2023 @11:55AM (#35667825)
In Canada, it’s a licensed profession
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil? by kahrl on Saturday April 22, 2023 @02:05PM (#35669328)
Are you saying the definition of engineering means there is only one correct way to do things? What is this comment even trying to say?
[ Parent | on HN ]