What makes learning AI prompt engineering so hard for you?👀
Posted by Putrid_Pound924@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 9 comments
I’ve been trying to learn AI prompt engineering and digital marketing recently, but I’ve noticed that most courses feel too generic or not interactive enough. I’m curious — what are the biggest pain points you’ve faced while learning similar skills? How do you usually stay motivated or measure progress?ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
huuaaang@reddit
The hardest part is that it doesn't work for any real product of any complexity. You just create a lot of AI slop that somebody else will have to rewrite later.
cib2018@reddit
It works great for virtually any homework assignment.
Beregolas@reddit
Well, AI prompt "engineering" is not real programming. It's just about very roughly describing what you want, and then playing the lottery until you win.
Programming is supposed to be deterministic (or at least, more deterministic than that), so you know that a win is your win, and a mistake is your mistake. Prompting the AI neither gives you that feeling of accomplishment (because, let's be real. YOU didn't do shit) and it also doesn't really work for anything more than small scripts automating excel sheets.
StickOnReddit@reddit
The biggest roadblock to this is the output of the LLM.
Programming is largely consistent, right - you write a function and get back predictable results, so much so that we can write tests against code and even complex code, if it's understood for its granular details, can produce precisely the same results time after time after time. Input X, return Y.
For some reason we've talked ourselves into using a tool where that just isn't the case anymore. Different LLMs solve the same prompt in different ways, and even the same LLM will solve the same prompt in different ways even when asked under the same conditions. Prompt engineering has nothing to do with it, putting together coherent sentences or describing the problem space correctly is a red herring - input x, return ?! is not typically a desirable outcome in programming.
So the biggest problem isn't that prompt engineering is hard, it's that it's a side quest. There's no "there" there, the results are still subject to hallucination and fuzzy logic even if you're some kind of mastercraft prompt artist. Why get good at this?
peterlinddk@reddit
The same reason that learning "ask questions on reddit" is extremely hard for some.
born_zynner@reddit
Bro AI generated his question about AI generating
HKamkar@reddit
Prompt engineering is not real engineering
SnugglyCoderGuy@reddit
This is 'learnprogramming'. Piss off or start learning to program.
disposepriority@reddit
Prompting is just so hard, you have to write entire sentences in and also have to describe what you want, it's truly one of the biggest bottlenecks in the industry right now, few posses the sacred skill of typing