The fun comes when there is no actual data model. All in all, I’d say being familiar with the data model is about 60% of my job. 35% is building queries and query scripts for people who need regular exports. 5% is running after other people’s fuckups.
Strap in, because this is a ride.
There is a raw database from a decade-and-a-half old app, which I get to access through a layer of views that does some joining, but not all, with absolutely no documentation on how the original database is structured or where things are pulled from or what anything refers to. No data dictionary, no list or map of key relations, some objects are mapped in two different views, no semantic naming of columns.
If you want to want to query order part delegations by who they’re assigned to (Recipient in the app) you need to use the foreign key RefAssignmentUnit. The “Assignment” unit that did the delegation is just RefUnit. If you have orders that were created by a salesperson on behalf of a customer, OrderingPerson (also a foreign key, but not named Ref-) is the customer, while OrderingPerson2 is the salesperson that entered the order. Don’t confuse that with Creator, which for orders created through the web form is usually a technical user, unless the salesperson is one of the veterans that use the direct app in which case it’ll be the salesperson while OrderingPerson2 is null.
Also, we have many-to-many relationships that are mapped through reference tables… whose columns are named object and reference for each and every one. Have fun trying to memorize which refers to which so you don’t need to look it up every damn time.
Create my own views to clean this up? Nope, only the third party service providers for the app can do that, and they don’t wanna. Our internal app admin (singular) can use some awkward tool to generate those views, but there’s no reverse lookup to see what a given column refers to. Also, they have no concept for what actually constitutes a good model because they’re not really familiar with the database, just with the app.
Get my own serverless DB to create views that query the original DB? No can do, you’d need to order a whole server and that’s pricy.
Get a cloud DB? Sure, but it will be managed by the cloud team and if you want to have or edit custom views, you’ll get to create a project request. They’ll put it in the backlog and work it into some future sprint.
Get literally any tool that allows me to efficiently create reusable data prep so I don’t have to copy & paste the base transformations needed for a given query every fucking time and if the source DB ever changes I need to update all my query scripts? If you can somehow squeeze the time to prepare a convincing pitch - a full Power Point presentation, of course - between all your tedious and redundant query preparation and script maintenance, find a management sponsor willing to hear you out and hopefully propose your request to their superiors. Best case: It becomes a whole project - alternatives will have to be considered first, implications, security, costs, and you’ll be the one having to assemble and present that information to management only to have some responsible person point out that it would actually be the remit of a different team… that also works in sprints, has a backlog and will give you no control over your prep.
And obviously, the app provider doesn’t give us any advance notice of just what will change in the DB with the next update. We only learn that when a view breaks. The app admin can use the tool to refresh the affected views then, while I scramble to determine all the scripts that need to be updated and copy&paste the fix. If a user has been granted their own access to the database, odds are they’ll come crying to me when their modified versions of my queries break.
There is a lot I like about my job, I acknowledge the difficulties of a historically grown system and service contracts, but the rigid and antiquated corporate culture can go take a long walk off a short pier.
Thank you. Funny enough, just today I chatted with a colleague that mentioned one of the tools was technically available to us, but actually not approved for use. Ordering it wouldn’t be an issue, but getting it signed off would be quite the chore.
I put in the same prompt and got this. Gpt never breaks down a request with here are some elements I can include etc; do you think this is in the custom instructions or something?
Yup normal picture for tats that you can’t get in one pic. I mean that’s why it generated like that, a ton of those pics exist and got shoved into the magic picture box.
In case you get it tattoed, also put the entire conversation next to it. Would be funny at least for a few years. Then, probably no one will remember what a ChatGPT is.
Getting both generic and specific models shoved down my throat by $multiNationalCorp on a daily basis is exhausting.
If I write an email that annoys someone and costs the company money, I’m thrilled to bits to own it and admit I fucked it up. But I dont have the time or energy to make sure that AI isn’t turning a reasonable email into something rage-inducing just by missing an obvious nuance. I’m certainly not hanging the quality of my code on the strength of an AI “helper.”
When we say LLMs don’t know or understand anything, this is what we mean. This is a perfect example of an “AI” just not having any idea what it’s doing.
I’ll start with a bit of praise: It does do a fairly good job of decomposing the elements of Python and the actuary profession into bits that would be representative of those realms.
But:
In the text version of the response, there are already far too many elements for a good tattoo, demonstrating it doesn’t understand tattoo design or even just design
In the drawn version, the design uses big blocks of color with no detail, which (even if they looked good on a white background; and they don’t;) would look like shit inked on someone’s skin. So again, no understand of tattoo art.
It produces a “simplified version” of the python logo. I assume those elements are the blue and yellow hexagons, which are at least the correct colors. But it doesn’t understand that, for this to be PART OF THE SAME DESIGN, they must be visually connected, not just near each other. It also doesn’t understand that the design is more like a plus; nor that the design is composed of two snakes; nor that the Python logo is ALREADY VERY SIMPLE, nor that the logo, lacking snakes, loses any meaning in its role of representing Python.
It says there’s a briefcase and glasses in there. Maybe the brown rectangle? Or is the gray rectangle meant to be a briefcase lying on its side so the handle is visible? No understanding here of how humans process visual information, or what makes a visual representation recognizable to a human brain.
Math stuff can be very visually interesting. Lots of mathematical constructs have compelling visuals that go with them. A competent designer could even tie them into the Python stuff in a unified way; like, imagine a bar graph where the bars were snakes, twining around each other in a double helix. You got math, you got Python, you got data analysis. None of this ties together, or is even made to look good on its own. No understanding of what makes something interesting.
Everything is just randomly scattered. Once again, no understanding of what design is.
AIs do not understand anything. They just regurgitate in ways that the algorithm chooses. There’s no attempt to make the algorithm right, or smart, or relevant, or anything except an algorithm that’s just mashing up strings and vectors.
I was hoping for a sand clock and the python snake, but now I’m not sure if the sand clock is an international actuarial thing, or if is just a brazillian one. But for mathematical notation related to actuarial sciences the annuanity [1] is the main one, so 2/10.
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