The motivation isn’t there to create new languages for humans when you’re programming at a higher level of abstraction now (AI prompting).

It’d be like inventing a new assembly language when everyone is writing code in higher level languages that compile to assembly.

I hope it’s not true, but I believe that’s what OP meant and I think the concern is valid!

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abound 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would argue it's more important than ever to make new languages with new ideas as we move towards new programming paradigms. I think the existence of modern LLMs encourages designing a language with all of the following attributes:

- Simple semantics (e.g. easy to understand for developers + LLMs, code is "obviously" correct)

- Very strongly typed, so you can model even very complex domains in a way the compiler can verify

- Really good error messages, to make agent loops more productive

- [Maybe] Easily integrates with existing languages, or at least makes it easy to port from existing languages

We may get to a point where humans don't need to look at the code at all, but we aren't there yet, so making the code easy to vet is important. Plus, there's also a few bajillion lines of legacy code that we need to deal with, wouldn't it be cool if you could port (or at least extend it) it into some standardized, performant, LLM-friendly language for future development?

	▲	kevindamm 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think that LLMs will be complemented best with a declarative language, as inserting new conditions/effects in them can be done without modifying much (if any!) of the existing code. Especially if the declarative language is a logic and/or constraint-based language. We're still in early days with LLMs! I don't think we're anywhere near the global optimum yet.
	▲	aaronblohowiak 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is why I use rust for everything practicable now. Llms make the tedious bits go away and I can just enjoy the fun bits.

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pxc 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It’d be like inventing a new assembly language when everyone is writing code in higher level languages that compile to assembly.

Isn't that what WASM is? Or more or less what is going on when people devise a new intermediate representation for a new virtual machine? Creating new assembly languages is a useful thing that people continue to do!

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merlincorey 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe prompting an AI is more like delegation than abstraction especially considering the non-deterministic nature of the results.

	▲	sarchertech 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It does further than non-determinism. LLM output is chaotic. 2 nearly identical prompts with a single minor difference can result in 2 radically different outputs.

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rapind 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We may end up using AI to create simplified bespoke subset languages that fit our preferences. Like a DSL of sorts but with better performance characteristics than a traditional DSL and a small enough surface area.