>These things aren’t deterministic so it’s hard to even use things like trial-and-error experiments to figure out what works, which as a computer scientist I find completely infuriating!
Nitpick: they can be made "deterministic" in a strict sense by using a deterministic sampling scheme, for instance by turning "temperature" down to 0. This isn't necessarily helpful for prompt experimentation, though - when deployed, prompts are usually combined with other input, so you risk simply substituting the non-determinism of sampling with the unpredictability of whether it will work with all inputs.
Nitpick: they can be made "deterministic" in a strict sense by using a deterministic sampling scheme, for instance by turning "temperature" down to 0. This isn't necessarily helpful for prompt experimentation, though - when deployed, prompts are usually combined with other input, so you risk simply substituting the non-determinism of sampling with the unpredictability of whether it will work with all inputs.