The underlying mechanism is still the same: humans type and products come out.

So something which must be true if this author is right is that whatever the new language is—the thing people are typing into markdown—must be able to express the same rigor in less words than existing source code.

Otherwise the result is just legacy coding in a new programming language.

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Otherwise the result is just legacy coding in a new programming language.

And this is why starting with COBOL and through various implementations of CASE tools, "software through pictures" or flowcharts or UML, etc, which were supposed to let business SMEs write software without needing programmers, have all failed to achieve that goal.

	▲	tyleo 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		While they failed to achieve the goal outright, I'd argue that each is a concrete step towards it. The languages we have today are more productive than the languages we had decades ago. I think it's an open question of whether we achieve the holy grail language as the submission describes. My guess is that we inch towards the submission's direction, even if we never achieve it. It won't surprise me if new languages take LLMs into account just like some languages now take the IDE experience into account.

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dpark 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> must be able to express the same rigor in less words than existing source code

Yes but also no. Writing source means rigorously specifying the implementation itself in deep detail. Most of the time, the implementation does not need to be specified with this sort of rigor. Instead the observable behavior needs to be specified rigorously.

	▲	tyleo 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That doesn't sound right. For example, there's plenty of software with the correct observable behavior which leaks credentials. So what needs to be captured goes beyond observable behavior.