4 ms·

> What tasks that we accomplish with code today will be accomplished with data tomorrow? "Eventually" all of it? (mind the quotes) If you save the config of a

> What tasks that we accomplish with code today will be accomplished with data tomorrow? "Eventually" all of it? (mind the quotes) If you save the config of a neural network, the "meat" of the NN so to speak, it's all "data" (matrices), but OTOH it's "code" (it tells the NN what to do).

mattkrause 10y ago
How about things like video games? Frameworks/libraries/engines will certainly abstract away more and more of the nitty-gritty details, but the framework can't write the gameplay parts for you: those are essentially creative decisions. I'd argue that writing anything like (State, Action) -> NewState transitions is, in fact, coding, even if it's done in a way that's much more declarative than we're used to.
- dagw 10y ago
  Here we end up in almost a semantic argument. Is using graphical tools like Unreal's Behavior Trees and Blueprint 'coding' or gameplay 'design'.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Yes :-) I think it's definitely "programming", though I'm willing to agree that "coding" seems to imply more typing text in some 80-column format and less clicking. People certainly call doing-stuff-with-LabView "LabView Programming" and it involves a similar interface. Two other thoughts a) Do you think tools like this will ever actually replace all coding? My experience with graphical programming has been that it's great for simple things, but you often reach a point where it'd be way easier to write it as code, particularly if you're doing something the designers haven't anticipated. b) I was actually interested in the contrast between ANNs, where the functional part is learnt from data--in part because we have no idea how to actually write a decent object recognizer from scratch--and something like a video game where you're necessarily designing/programming/coding up a creative idea that you have.

4 ms·

> What tasks that we accomplish with code today will be accomplished with data tomorrow? "Eventually" all of it? (mind the quotes) If you save the config of a

by Florin_Andrei 10y ago

mattkrause 10y ago
How about things like video games? Frameworks/libraries/engines will certainly abstract away more and more of the nitty-gritty details, but the framework can't write the gameplay parts for you: those are essentially creative decisions. I'd argue that writing anything like (State, Action) -> NewState transitions is, in fact, coding, even if it's done in a way that's much more declarative than we're used to.
- dagw 10y ago
  Here we end up in almost a semantic argument. Is using graphical tools like Unreal's Behavior Trees and Blueprint 'coding' or gameplay 'design'.
  - mattkrause 10y ago
    Yes :-) I think it's definitely "programming", though I'm willing to agree that "coding" seems to imply more typing text in some 80-column format and less clicking. People certainly call doing-stuff-with-LabView "LabView Programming" and it involves a similar interface. Two other thoughts a) Do you think tools like this will ever actually replace all coding? My experience with graphical programming has been that it's great for simple things, but you often reach a point where it'd be way easier to write it as code, particularly if you're doing something the designers haven't anticipated. b) I was actually interested in the contrast between ANNs, where the functional part is learnt from data--in part because we have no idea how to actually write a decent object recognizer from scratch--and something like a video game where you're necessarily designing/programming/coding up a creative idea that you have.