You are comparing a PL to a text generator. What are you on?

Hey, please don't cross into personal attack - you can make your substantive points without that, and we'll all be better for it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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akagr 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe (correct me if I’m wrong), their point is that with time, we’re writing less code ourselves and more through LLMs. This can make people disconnected from the “joy” of using certain programming languages over others. I’ve only used cl for toy projects and use elisp to configure my editor. As models get better (they’re already very good), the cost of trashing code spirals downwards. The nuances of one language being aesthetically better than other will matter less over time.

FWIW, I also think performant languages like rust will gain way more prominence. Their main downside is that they’re more “involved” to write. But they’re fast and have good type systems. If humans aren’t writing code directly anymore, would a language being simpler or cleverer to read and write ultimately matter? Why would you ask a model to write your project in python, for instance? If only a model will ever interact with code, choice of language will be purely functional. I know we’re not fully there yet but latest models like opus 4.6 are extremely good at reasoning and often one-shotting solutions.

Going back to lower level languages isn’t completely out of the picture, but models have to get way better and require way less intervention for that to happen.

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bitwize 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, I'm not.

I used to appreciate Lisp for the enhanced effectiveness it granted to the unaided human programmer. It used to be one of the main reasons I used the language.

But a programmer+LLM is going to be far more effective in any language than an unaided programmer is in Lisp—and a programmer+LLM is going to be more effective in a popular language with a large training set, such as Java, TypeScript, Kotlin, or Rust, than in Lisp. So in a world with LLMs, the main practical reason to choose Lisp disappears.

And no, LLMs are doing more than just generating text, spewing nonsense into the void. They are solving problems. Try spending some time with Claude Opus 4.6 or ChatGPT 5.3. Give it a real problem to chew on. Watch it explain what's going on and spit out the answer.

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lelanthran 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> But a programmer+LLM is going to be far more effective in any language than an unaided programmer is in Lisp—and a programmer+LLM is going to be more effective in a popular language with a large training set, such as Java, TypeScript, Kotlin, or Rust, than in Lisp. So in a world with LLMs, the main practical reason to choose Lisp disappears.

You are working on the assumption that humans don't need to even look at the code ever again. At this point it in time, it is not true.

The trajectory over the last 3 years do not lead me to believe that it will be true in the future.

But, lets assume that in some future, it is true: If that is the case, then Lisp is a better representation than those other languages for LLMs to program in; after all, why have the LLMs write in Javascript (or Java, or Rust, or whatever), which a compiler backend lowers into an AST, which then gets lowered into machine code.

Much better to program in the AST itself.

IOW, why program in the intermediate language like JS, Java, Rust, etc when you can program in the lowered language?

For humans, using the JS, Java or Rust lets us verbosely describe whatever the AST is in terms humans can understand, however the more compact AST is unarguably better for the way LLMs work (token prediction).

So, in a world where all code is written by LLMs, using an intermediate verbose language is not going to happen unless the prompter specifically forcibly selects a language.

	▲	bitwize an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> The trajectory over the last 3 years do not lead me to believe that it will be true in the future. Everything changed in November of 2025 with Opus 4.5 and GPT 5.2 a short time later. StrongDM is now building out complex systems with zero human intervention. Again, stop and actually use these models first, then engage in discussion about what they can and can't do. > But, lets assume that in some future, it is true: If that is the case, then Lisp is a better representation than those other languages for LLMs to program in; after all, why have the LLMs write in Javascript (or Java, or Rust, or whatever), which a compiler backend lowers into an AST, which then gets lowered into machine code. That's your human brain thinking it knows better. The "bitter lesson" of AI is that more data=better performance and even if you try to build a system that encapsulates human-brain common sense, it will be trounced by a system simply trained on more data. There is vastly, vastly more training data for JavaScript, Java, and Rust than there is for Lisp. So, in the real world, LLMs perform better with those. Unlike us, they don't give a shit about notation. All forms of token streams look alike to them, whether they involve a lot of () or a lot of {;}.

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lgrapenthin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My hammer is also solving problems. Still, hammering is not programming. LLMs are text generators.

	▲	bitwize 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The difference between the programming tools available before and LLM-based programming tools is the difference between your hammer and that of Fix-it Felix, which magically "fixes" anything it strikes. We are living in that future, now. Actually try it with frontier models and agentic development loops before you opine.

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rootnod3 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Until there is a bug and say due to DNS issues your LLM is. It reachable because everything is down

	▲	fragmede 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Good thing I've got Qwen downloaded to my MacBook in case of that eventuality!