| ▲ | The beginning of programming as we'll know it?(bitsplitting.org) |
| 41 points by zdw a day ago | 24 comments |
| |
|
| ▲ | an0malous an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > If you interpret these examples to mean that any person can write down any list of requirements along with any user interface specs, and the AI will consistently produce a satisfactory product, then I’d agree programmers are toast. I think the road to this is pretty clear now. It’s all about building the harness now such that the AI can write something and get feedback from type checks, automated tests, runtime errors, logs, and other observability tools. The majority of software is fairly standardized UI forms running CRUD operations against some backend or data store and interacting with APIs. |
| |
| ▲ | kami23 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I am also of this opinion that a lot of this can be solved in time with a harness. And whole heartedly agree that there is a class of webapp that has been trivialized that can make a mom and pop shop up to 'enterprise' (80% of our architecture seems to center around the same pattern at my $DAYJOB) run just fine if they accept some of the vibes. This type of works seems to be happening as a lot of orchestrator projects that pop up here every once in a while, and I've just been waiting for one with a pipeline 'language' malleable enough to work for me that I can then make generic enough for a big class of solutions. I feel doomed to make my own, but I feel like I should do my due diligence. |
|
|
| ▲ | hyperhello 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My feeling is that AI is not real coding; it is coding-adjacent. Project Management, Sales, Marketing, Writing Books About KanBan, AI Programming, User Interface Design, Installing Routers are coding-adjacent. AI is not real coding any more than The Sims is homemaking. You can use AI and hang with the tech guys and get your check but you are going to be treading water and trying to be liked personally to stay where you are. No question it's a job, but no, it's not coding. |
| |
| ▲ | mikkupikku 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My thinking is that high level languages like C aren't real coding. If you don't even know what ISA the software will be run on, then you need to get the fuck off my lawn! Attitude as old as time itself. | | |
| ▲ | Chinjut 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, "An LLM is just a new higher level programming language", sure. A new programming language with no tractable guarantees about the behavior of any particular program, including in practice no guarantees that the same source code (in this new programming language) will reliably produce the same behavior. This is very different from traditional programming languages and how we can reason about them. (Yes, one can write C programs with undefined behavior, but C does also have many well-defined properties which allow people to reason about well-defined C programs logically reliably.) | |
| ▲ | hyperhello 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You mock, but not very persuasively. You seem to be relying on a silly idea you don't even believe in: that someone, once, made fun of C programming. | | |
| ▲ | operatingthetan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >AI is not real coding any more than The Sims is homemaking. Your analogy is bad. The programmer and the AI both produce working code. The other poster's response was correct. | |
| ▲ | napsec 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I can't speak personally to what it was like to be a C developer in the early days of that language, but when I started out as a Ruby on Rails developer over a decade ago I was definitely told by some people that it didn't count as 'real programing' because of how much was abstracted away by the framework. | | | |
| ▲ | mikkupikku 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Mocking? I'm quoting exactly the sort of thing that used to be said in earnest in the 80s and 90s. What you're doing now is exactly the same thing, there's no difference at all. Its the same reaction borne from the same old man instinct to bitch about the kids going soft. Yawn. | | |
| ▲ | skydhash 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Both Algol and Lisp were from the 60s. I think programmers and computers scientists were already acquainted with high level programming languages enough to not equate using C as going soft. Also software was always about domain knowledge and formal reasoning. Coding is just notation. Someone may like paper and pen, and someone may like a typewriter, but ultimately it’s the writing that matters. Correctness of a program does not depends on the language (and the cpu only manipulate electric flow). I argue against AI because most of its users don’t care about the correctness of their code. They just want to produce lots of it (the resurgence of the flawed LoC metric as a badge of honor). | | |
| ▲ | signatoremo an hour ago | parent [-] | | > I argue against AI because most of its users don’t care about the correctness of their code. This is remarkably sloppy for someone who codes. No facts, just opinion, claimed with confidence. | | |
| ▲ | skydhash an hour ago | parent [-] | | > No facts, just opinion, claimed with confidence Strong opinions, loosely held. What I’ve seen seems to confirm that opinion, so I’m still holding on to it. |
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | qsera an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think it should be called dice-coding, not vibe-coding. You roll the LLM dice, and sometimes it comes with the right looking program on the top. Since the dice is loaded heavily, this happens quite often. This makes people think that the dice can program. |
|
|
| ▲ | phyzix5761 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > any person can write down any list of requirements along with any user interface specs Isn't this just a new programming language? A higher level language which will require new experts to know how to get the best results out of it? I've seen non-technical people struggle with AI generated code because they don't understand all the little nuances that go into building a simple web app. |
| |
| ▲ | Chinjut 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | A programming language with no tractable guarantees about the behavior of any particular program, including in practice no guarantees that the same source code (in this new programming language) will reliably produce the same behavior. This is very different from traditional programming languages and how we can reason about them. |
|
|
| ▲ | ma2kx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In chess, engines have long been stronger than humans, but for a long time a (super) grandmaster with an engine was still better than an engine alone. |
| |
| ▲ | theteapot an hour ago | parent [-] | | Roughly 20y DeepBlue to AlphaZero. I don't think that is comparable though. Use of deep neural networks was what made the machines starting with AlphaZero dominant again. I.e. we're already in the new paradigm. |
|
|
| ▲ | satisfice 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| ‘There is a confirmation bias at work here: every developer who has experienced such a remarkable outcome is delighted to share it. It helps to contribute to a mass (human) hallucination that computers really are capable of anything, and really are taking over the world.” This is survivorship bias, a form of sample bias. Confirmation bias is a form of motivated reasoning where you search for evidence that confirms your existing beliefs. |
|
| ▲ | fraywing 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm observing that there is some kind of status quo bias nearly uniformly being surfaced by the programming community right now. I myself have feelings like this, as a software engineer by trade. "We will forever be useful!" As a sounding cry against radical transformation. I hope that's the case, but some of these pieces just seem like copium. |
|
| ▲ | julianlam 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Just a few years ago, AI essentially could not program at all. In the future, a given AI instance may “program better” than any single human in history. But for now, real programmers will always win. For how long? Do I get to feel smug about this for 10 days, 10 weeks, or 10 years? That radically changes the planned trajectory of my life. |
| |
| ▲ | operatingthetan 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | These posts are just programmers trying to understand their new place in the hierarchy. I'm in the same place and get it, but also truisms like 'will always win' is basically just throwing a wild guess at what the future will look like. A better attitude is to attempt to catch the wave. | | |
| ▲ | TacticalCoder 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | TFA's author is literally saying it may happen. He's using AI so he already caught the wave. He's augmenting himself with AI tools. He's not saying "AI will never surpass humans at writing programs". He writes: " At this particular moment, human developers are especially valuable, because of the transitional period we’re living through." You and GP are both attacking him on a strawman: it's not clear why. We're seeing countless AI slop and the enshittification and lower uptime for services day after day. To anyone using these tools seriously on a daily basis it's totally obvious there are, TODAY*, shortcomings. TFA doesn't talk about tomorrow. It talks about today. | | |
| ▲ | mikkupikku 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | To be fair, the author phrased his point poorly in a way that invites confusion: > "But for now, real programmers will always win." "for now ... always", not a good phrasing. |
|
|
|
