This concept won't reach that point because when you chisel too hard it crumbles. There are countless lower level tasks that typical programmers no longer learn how to do. Our capacity for knowledge is not unlimited so we offload everything we can to move to the next level of abstraction.

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lsy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

AI coding isn’t an abstraction, though. You can’t treat a prompt like source code because it will give you a different output every time you use it. An abstraction lets you offload cognitive capacity while retaining knowledge of “what you are doing”. With AI coding either you need to carefully review outputs and you aren’t saving any cognitive capacity, or you aren’t looking at the outputs and don’t know what you’re doing, in a very literal sense.

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Krssst 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Non-determinism is not as much of a problem as the lack of spec. C++ has the C++ norm, Python has its manual. One can refer to it to predict reliably how the program will behave without thinking of the generated assembly. LLMs have no spec.

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lukan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"You can’t treat a prompt like source code because it will give you a different output every time you use it"

But it seems we are heading there. For simple stuff, if I made a very clear spec - I can be almost sure, that every time I give that prompt to a AI, it will work without error, using the same algorithms. So quality of prompt is more valuable, than the generated code

So either way, this is what I focus my thinking on right now, something that always was important and now with AI even more so - crystal clear language describing what the program should do and how.

That requires enough thinking effort.

	▲	lelanthran 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Didnt work for the prod data that the AI nukes in spite of prompts saying "DON'T FUCKING GUESS", just like that in all caps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47911524 What makes you think it will work for you?

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IceDane an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's staggering to me how many times I've heard this argument that LLMs are just the next level of abstraction. Some people are even comparing them to compilers.

	▲	girvo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Some people are even comparing them to compilers. A lot of people are using them as such too: the amount of people talking about "my fleets of agents working on 4 different projects": they aren't reviewing that output. They say they are, but they aren't, anymore than I review the LLVM IR. It makes me feel like I'm in some fantasy land: I watch Opus 4.7 get things consistently backwards at the margins, mess up, make bugs: we wouldn't accept a compiler that did any of this at this scale or level lol

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staticshock 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's true, but I think it's beside the point. The flip side of that argument, which is equally true, goes something like, "not doing cognitive push-ups leads to cognitive atrophy."

There are skills we're losing that are probably ok to lose (e.g. spacial memory & reasoning vs GPS, mental arithmetic vs calculators), primarily because those are well bounded domains, so we understand the nature of the codependency we're signing up for. AI is an amorphous and still growing domain. It is not a specific rung in the abstraction hierarchy; it is every rung simultaneously, but at different fidelity levels.

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ua709 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I get your point, I just wonder how accurate it is. We basically never look at the output of the compiler, so I agree that tool allows one to operate at a higher level than assembly. But I always have to wade through the output from AI so I’m not sure I got to move to the next level of abstraction. But maybe that’s just me.

	▲	willhslade 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Are compilers deterministic?

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imiric an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The idea that a tool intended to replace all human cognitive work is the next level of abstraction is so fundamentally flawed, that I'm not sure it's made in good faith anymore. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that it's a coping mechanism for being made redundant.

Nevermind the fact that these tools are nowhere near as capable as their marketing suggests. Once companies and society start hitting the brick wall of inevitable consequences of the current hype cycle, there will be a great crash, followed by industry correction. Only then will actually useful applications of this technology surface, of which there are plenty. We've seen how this plays out a few times before already.