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Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

von Neumann taught us that code and data are the same thing and the distinction is a matter of context and perspective. Some bits are code-like and some are data-like, and some inhabit a gray area where no bright lines are to be found.

It’s provocative to claim that prompts are more like code than like data. Feels to me more like they sit in that gray area alongside things like HTML, config files, regular expressions, and spreadsheets.

In practical terms the more pressing question is what kind of tools are needed to manage prompt bits. Is it beneficial to manage prompts using traditional software engineering tooling? This post says yes. Maybe, but I can see traditional data management tooling being equally applicable.

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Code Is data that expresses instructions to some processing unit for it to do tasks.

Prompts fit that description very well so I don't find that provocative or controversial at all.

The fact that traditionally the execution unit was very rigid and that the language used to express instructions was distant from human natural language is more of a consequence of an implementation rather than a fundamental distinction between code and data

> expresses instructions

To instruct is akin to providing an input. Where do we input to? The program. The program is programmed; but most importantly, the input is not programmed in the sense the program is programmed. It is, perhaps, thoughfully designed (or not). This role is best described as Prompt Designing or Prompt Engineering, not Prompt "Programming". In any case, it is indeed very important. But in my respectful opinion, it is not programming.

It's kind of like thinking that entering a query into a search engine is programming - a host of techniques can be utilized to optimize how that input effects the output (tomes can be written on this just as they can for LLM prompt design by now).

I can kind of defend that premise but it breaks the meaning of conventional usages, and creates more confusion than it brings clarity.

Fwiw the term "prompt engineering" begins as a joke or at the very least half-serious, along the lines of "naming engineer" etc.

But it turns out that a) it's useful to know how to write prompts effectively b) it's time consuming c) it requires skill

So it became more and more an actual thing (discipline?) worth to be taken setiously

All code is data. Not all data is code though surely? Depends how you define "code" I guess. Edit: Thinking about it more, I guess all computer data is "encoded" in some way and represented in a coded form.

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