4 ms·

Will software that writes code alter tech’s script?

13 points by jeo1234 11y ago

bitcuration 11y ago
This day finally comes... yet.
jstanley 11y ago
We already have code that writes code. Guess who uses it: programmers. It doesn't matter how smart the computer gets, a smart programmer with the computer is always going to be more useful than the computer on its own.
- lhecker 11y ago
  I would be careful with the word "always", because that's a pretty long time span compared to since when "programmers" even exist...
buffoon 11y ago
So first they try and get me to download an app and when I decline, I get a paywall. I suspect the content isn't with the cost or effort to work around it.
- gpvos 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
  - geoff-codes 11y ago
    Ok, got it, and fair enough. So, per said item/policy: > It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. So, can anyone share the workaround for this one? In a desktop browser, I get a paywall; 'x'ing out of it, I'm redirected to the front page; and blocking the paywall's html element reveals that the article behind it is empty.
    - geoff-codes 11y ago
      To answer my own question (and for anyone else who's an idiot like me): Google the title of this post and look at Google's cache. i.e., http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EI3f-tS04ZkJ:www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c6ccace-521d-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EI3f-tS...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
adrianN 11y ago
I think having the computer translate your natural language intentions into code is at least as hard as translating your natural language intentions into a different natural language. I don't see that problem being solved to sufficient accuracy, so I really doubt that this approach will replace traditional programming in the next ten years.
paublyrne 11y ago
The shark example brings to mind Star Trek TNG, when someone would 'write' a programme by simply giving vague voice commands to the computer, and end up with exactly what they wanted. In reality it's very difficult to describe visual things in words. Also, how does a fierce shark look different to a shark?
- tariqali34 11y ago
  This is how I would imagine the 'fierce shark' being programmed: 1) The "fierce" plugin is installed and immediately run. It is targeted on the shark sprite. 2) "Fierce" is an evolutionary algorithm. It will create several hundred generations of a shark, mutating the shark sprite in some small way. The shark's fitness is based on how 'scary' the shark is, and the 'scariness' of the shark is calculated based on a dataset compiled by children that rated how scary colored pictures were from a scale of 1 to 10. The evolutionary algorithm's goal is to maximize the fitness of the shark. 3) The final shark (with the highest fitness) is outputted to the user. It will look very similar to a normal shark, with some minor variations in color to increase the scariness of the shark. What these people are doing is not impossible. However, the potential for so-called "leaky abstractions"[0] messing up the development process is very high. Programmers will likely be necessary, if only to ensure the abstractions are functioning well enough for non-programmers to use. [0]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...
colinmegill 11y ago
lol... this is Andrew Ng being asked whether machine learning will solve software anytime soon: http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmimn.gif http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmimn.gif
geoff-codes 11y ago
Ha. Having conquered the paywall: Ridiculous. COBOL. AppleScript. Lego Mindstorms. Also: Is it difficult to develop a programming language which is closely related to human language? (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267489/is-it-difficult-to-develop-a-programming-language-which-is-closely-related-to-hu http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267489/is-it-...) Or, in one of the clearest and most succinct pieces Dijkstra ever wrote: On the foolishness of "natural language programming". https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
coldnebo 11y ago
“We learnt that we were building the same thing over and over, and realised that the more interesting thing to do was to cut out the wasted effort and cost, and work out how to automate 90 per cent of writing code.” I view that as a failure of abstraction and composition, not as a failure of automation. If it's tedious to hook up window controls to underlying data, or to handle properly a form validation loop in a controller for the millionth time, we should be asking why the abstraction layer we are using requires that tedium instead of being more succinct? Often the abstraction is complex because of the degrees of freedom it has. Automation on the other hand reduces the degrees of freedom. This is great if you are the one who is reducing and making the choices, but if you are letting someone else make all the choices about what is possible... It's like the difference between driving and being chauffeured. Even if this system were like the mathematician: "show me all possible worlds satisfying X" it would require either a huge search space to pick the desired answer or present only a handful of preselected choices. Search refinement is more interesting, sounds like a great deal of complexity to avoid (less?) complexity of actually doing the work-- especially in meanial cases-- i.e. I don't want to sift through 1000 variations of form validation to "find" the magic one that completely meets my business needs.
callum85 11y ago
Here's a good comment from a reader, which I think addresses a misunderstanding behind this article about what programming actually is: > The thing that takes time is humans understanding what they want. Programmers are like therapists who help them crystalize their thoughts to the point where they are at least vaguely consistent. The program is just a representation of that idea.
- bitcuration 11y ago
  Yet the widely recognized most effective way to crystallize the idea, is not via therapy but through rounds of prototyping. Now only if prototyping is as easy as snap a finger. Coding automation too will help to make better software. What programmers have done is to translate human ideas into machine understandable symbols, or graphic layout. Not he latter is probably far more difficult than the former which itself can be as hard as NLP and essentially the goal of the almost entire computer language evolution, to improve the effectiveness of translations human ideas to computer understandable symbols.
wangii 11y ago
I doubt if anyone could describe in natural language a complex enough idea clearly and consistently without doing it. It's not AI, it's Super Intelligent.

13 points by jeo1234 11y ago

This day finally comes... yet.

We already have code that writes code. Guess who uses it: programmers. It doesn't matter how smart the computer gets, a smart programmer with the computer is always going to be more useful than the computer on its own.

lhecker 11y ago
I would be careful with the word "always", because that's a pretty long time span compared to since when "programmers" even exist...

buffoon 11y ago

So first they try and get me to download an app and when I decline, I get a paywall. I suspect the content isn't with the cost or effort to work around it.

gpvos 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- geoff-codes 11y ago
  Ok, got it, and fair enough. So, per said item/policy: > It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. So, can anyone share the workaround for this one? In a desktop browser, I get a paywall; 'x'ing out of it, I'm redirected to the front page; and blocking the paywall's html element reveals that the article behind it is empty.
  - geoff-codes 11y ago
    To answer my own question (and for anyone else who's an idiot like me): Google the title of this post and look at Google's cache. i.e., http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EI3f-tS04ZkJ:www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c6ccace-521d-11e5-b029-b9d50a74fd14.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EI3f-tS...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

adrianN 11y ago

I think having the computer translate your natural language intentions into code is at least as hard as translating your natural language intentions into a different natural language. I don't see that problem being solved to sufficient accuracy, so I really doubt that this approach will replace traditional programming in the next ten years.

paublyrne 11y ago

The shark example brings to mind Star Trek TNG, when someone would 'write' a programme by simply giving vague voice commands to the computer, and end up with exactly what they wanted. In reality it's very difficult to describe visual things in words. Also, how does a fierce shark look different to a shark?

tariqali34 11y ago
This is how I would imagine the 'fierce shark' being programmed: 1) The "fierce" plugin is installed and immediately run. It is targeted on the shark sprite. 2) "Fierce" is an evolutionary algorithm. It will create several hundred generations of a shark, mutating the shark sprite in some small way. The shark's fitness is based on how 'scary' the shark is, and the 'scariness' of the shark is calculated based on a dataset compiled by children that rated how scary colored pictures were from a scale of 1 to 10. The evolutionary algorithm's goal is to maximize the fitness of the shark. 3) The final shark (with the highest fitness) is outputted to the user. It will look very similar to a normal shark, with some minor variations in color to increase the scariness of the shark. What these people are doing is not impossible. However, the potential for so-called "leaky abstractions"[0] messing up the development process is very high. Programmers will likely be necessary, if only to ensure the abstractions are functioning well enough for non-programmers to use. [0]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...

colinmegill 11y ago

lol... this is Andrew Ng being asked whether machine learning will solve software anytime soon: http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmimn.gif http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmimn.gif

geoff-codes 11y ago

Ha. Having conquered the paywall: Ridiculous. COBOL. AppleScript. Lego Mindstorms. Also: Is it difficult to develop a programming language which is closely related to human language? (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267489/is-it-difficult-to-develop-a-programming-language-which-is-closely-related-to-hu http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/267489/is-it-...) Or, in one of the clearest and most succinct pieces Dijkstra ever wrote: On the foolishness of "natural language programming". https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...

coldnebo 11y ago

“We learnt that we were building the same thing over and over, and realised that the more interesting thing to do was to cut out the wasted effort and cost, and work out how to automate 90 per cent of writing code.” I view that as a failure of abstraction and composition, not as a failure of automation. If it's tedious to hook up window controls to underlying data, or to handle properly a form validation loop in a controller for the millionth time, we should be asking why the abstraction layer we are using requires that tedium instead of being more succinct? Often the abstraction is complex because of the degrees of freedom it has. Automation on the other hand reduces the degrees of freedom. This is great if you are the one who is reducing and making the choices, but if you are letting someone else make all the choices about what is possible... It's like the difference between driving and being chauffeured. Even if this system were like the mathematician: "show me all possible worlds satisfying X" it would require either a huge search space to pick the desired answer or present only a handful of preselected choices. Search refinement is more interesting, sounds like a great deal of complexity to avoid (less?) complexity of actually doing the work-- especially in meanial cases-- i.e. I don't want to sift through 1000 variations of form validation to "find" the magic one that completely meets my business needs.

callum85 11y ago

Here's a good comment from a reader, which I think addresses a misunderstanding behind this article about what programming actually is: > The thing that takes time is humans understanding what they want. Programmers are like therapists who help them crystalize their thoughts to the point where they are at least vaguely consistent. The program is just a representation of that idea.

bitcuration 11y ago
Yet the widely recognized most effective way to crystallize the idea, is not via therapy but through rounds of prototyping. Now only if prototyping is as easy as snap a finger. Coding automation too will help to make better software. What programmers have done is to translate human ideas into machine understandable symbols, or graphic layout. Not he latter is probably far more difficult than the former which itself can be as hard as NLP and essentially the goal of the almost entire computer language evolution, to improve the effectiveness of translations human ideas to computer understandable symbols.

wangii 11y ago

I doubt if anyone could describe in natural language a complex enough idea clearly and consistently without doing it. It's not AI, it's Super Intelligent.