We might not even need libraries after all, since APIs, libraries and abstractions in general exist for humans to grasp complexities. Abstractions have their merits, but they have downsides too, and AI might be a way to solve them. The interesting part for me is where that ends, because it's systems all the way down, and even on a higher level abstractions exist to allow humans to make sense of the world. Services, products, companies, political parties, what if in the future we don't need any of it anymore because the abstraction is obsolete?

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Turskarama 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Libraries do a LOT more than that. Abstractions also make LLMs more efficient, and lets some problems be handed off to much cheaper algorithms. They also mean that the way data is handled can be standardized which means you don't have to design an entire protocol from scratch every time you want to send data somewhere.

Every advantage libraries have given us still exists in the world of AI.

	▲	groestl 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The efficiency argument I accept, it's surely one main driver why systems tend to form and centralize and one important factor in the balance. Still, one can observe the weird things humans and AIs do when trying to dance around the gaps in leaky abstractions. So there's a tradeoff between (the effort spent on) that, and dropping the abstraction completely, as soon as the abstraction stops being a necessary constraint (due to the limited capacity of a human brain).

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HPsquared 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They also help AI to manage complexity, in just the same way.

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sumitkumar 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The libraries are there for avoiding repetition. It is useful on its own without other benefits like implicit/explicit boundaries, readability by humans etc. If all lego(base unit software) pieces were unique shaped it might fit your requirements more efficiently but the cost of building those unique shaped legos explodes with the size of the lego piece required.

LLMs compress the known shapes well and fit them to solve for a problem but they are still not good enough to build from scratch a large new lego piece which fits a full problem perfectly. And such a large lego piece might not be the most efficient solution either and might be difficult to prove so.

	▲	groestl 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> the cost of building those unique shaped legos explodes with the size of the lego piece required. The cost of plastic injection molding is almost entirely due to the cost of creating the steel mold. My argument is: with LLMs we are entering a world which makes it cost effective to build many more things from scratch, which is akin to going from building things out of pre-fabricated lego pieces to 3D printing (agreeably not cost effective for everything, but for many things).

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Klonoar 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Libraries contribute to the humans being able to review things well, so no, they may still have their use cases.

An AI might be able to create everything “from scratch”, sure - but I ain’t sitting there reviewing every bespoke thing it shits out. I want that offloaded to make it maintainable.

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tmnvix 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What about readability? Are people going to give up on reading and understanding the code? Maybe the abstractions aren't only necessary for writing the code?

	▲	turblety 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I think the answer to this is yes, it'll be just like "reading and understanding your assembly". We just don't check what instructions your code compiles down to anymore, and I think the same will be for code.

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DrScientist 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Indeed.

Perhaps we will go from:

framework X -> avoid writing boiler plate

AI -> avoid writing boiler plate

And AI may generate the more explicit boiler plate more reliably directly, than the higher level framrwork with leaky abstractions.

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sgt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Where we're going, we won't even need programming languages or libraries at all. AI's will just generate pure binaries full of magic, right? /s

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varjag 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It can already do that, give it a try.

(just asked Sol Max Fast to write a Tic Tac Toe ELF directly. 4m 28s, 912 byte executable)

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sgt 2 days ago | parent [-]

That's pretty insane.

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sgt a day ago | parent [-]

Btw, interestingly, I tried getting Ox Alpha to make Tic Tac Toe directly as a Linux ELF executable. It came up with assembly code (NASM syntax) and it just timed out when I asked for pure machine code.

	▲	varjag a day ago \| parent [-]
		Have no experience with Ox Alpha but Sol went to code it down in a .hex file that it then converted into an ELF executable. The exact prompt was Create a simplest terminal based tic tac toe game. Generate executable ELF binary right away, without using existing or impromptu compilers.

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asdf88990 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, you already can, the AI will just do “natural language” to a programming language, and then call a compiler for the next step. Done.

	▲	alecbz 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> we won't even need programming languages > just do “natural language” to a programming language

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jensgk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I am pretty sure that is where we are going. No /s

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sgt 2 days ago | parent [-]

But how do you debug that?

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Brian_K_White 2 days ago | parent [-]

An ai decompiles a binary to a human representation. Not even to a traditional programming language but just to an md file or infographic.

Probably terribly but probably good enough for some people to love it, and probably getting better over time.

Although I'm not sure who the user is when the world has been turned into power plants and chip fabs by then and there aren't any humans left since they need things like farms.

	▲	sgt 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I suppose you could decompile it to math (very broadly speaking).