You want me to write an entire library for a brand new sensor that just came off the market, by parsing through and reading a hundred page datasheet manual, understanding i2c or SPI communication timings, configuration packets, etc…
When I can just drag and drop the PDF into ChatGPT and say “make a library for this sensor” and it spits out something that has been working without issue for the past 2 years?
I hear crazy claims like this but haven’t seen anything close to this with my own eyes (yet).
I shudder at the idea that SPI or i2c are considered complex for someone supposed to interact with hardware. What will you do if a problem arises and you don’t even know which pin does what?
I2C/SPI - and indeed most hardware interfaces - are of course trivial to anyone skilled in the art. Digging through badly written vendor documentation though, then comparing it with the reference implementation that was buried on a website behind a sign that says “beware of the leopard” and which directly contradicts the documentation on various key points, is a non-trivial and ultimately unproductive use of time - and AI tools can be pretty good at that shit.
Generative AIs are a useful tool. Most of the criticisms of AI vendors are also valid (apart from the water one, that’s just bullshit,) but that doesn’t stop them being a useful tool - and engineers who learn to use them as a tool will be more productive and will be more employable than those who stick their fingers in their ears and insist on only producing artisinal code hand-whittled with their grandfather’s tools.
You want me to write an entire library for a brand new sensor that just came off the market, by parsing through and reading a hundred page datasheet manual, understanding i2c or SPI communication timings, configuration packets, etc…
When I can just drag and drop the PDF into ChatGPT and say “make a library for this sensor” and it spits out something that has been working without issue for the past 2 years?
Why? Why would I be that stupid?
I hear crazy claims like this but haven’t seen anything close to this with my own eyes (yet).
I shudder at the idea that SPI or i2c are considered complex for someone supposed to interact with hardware. What will you do if a problem arises and you don’t even know which pin does what?
I2C/SPI - and indeed most hardware interfaces - are of course trivial to anyone skilled in the art. Digging through badly written vendor documentation though, then comparing it with the reference implementation that was buried on a website behind a sign that says “beware of the leopard” and which directly contradicts the documentation on various key points, is a non-trivial and ultimately unproductive use of time - and AI tools can be pretty good at that shit.
Generative AIs are a useful tool. Most of the criticisms of AI vendors are also valid (apart from the water one, that’s just bullshit,) but that doesn’t stop them being a useful tool - and engineers who learn to use them as a tool will be more productive and will be more employable than those who stick their fingers in their ears and insist on only producing artisinal code hand-whittled with their grandfather’s tools.