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If program synthesis is as far advanced as you say it is, how come I make six figures doing something that you seem to be arguing can be totally automated? The

If program synthesis is as far advanced as you say it is, how come I make six figures doing something that you seem to be arguing can be totally automated? The reality seems to disagree with your statements. Program synthesis is as of right now limited to academic research and highly narrow use cases. If the opposite was true, I’d be out of a job. I think copilot is probably the first product of its type that might make its way into the hands of users en masse. Edit: Btw I was referring to program synthesis based off informal natural language spec. Spec inference is part of the synthesis pipeline, I think it’s not fair to just ignore that problem.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
The purpose of program synthesis is not to get programmers out of a job. Rather, it's a tool to help programmers better do their job. I think it's easy to see why you're not using it. With few exceptions, advances in research take many years to percolate down to the industry. And of course the industry is famous for following trends without real understanding of anything. Anyway the review I linked to has some examples of real-world applications of program synthesis. Don't be afraid to read it- it's light on formal notation and you don't need special skills to understand it. I appreciate that it's a long document but there's a Table of Contents at the start and you should be able to skim through in a short time just to get a general idea of the subject. Anyway I can see you're trying to "wing it" and reason from first principles about something you know nothing about, in true SWE style. Yet, you don't know what you don't know, so you start from the wrong assumptions ("fully automated" etc) and arrive at the wrong conclusions. That's no way to understand anything. It's certainly not going to give you any good idea about what's going on in an entire field of research you know nothing about. Of course you're not obliged to know anything about program synthesis, but in that case, maybe consider sitting back and listening rather than expressing strong opinions with absolute conviction that is not supported by your knowledge? I think that will make a better conversation, and a better internet, for everyone.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

The purpose of program synthesis is not to get programmers out of a job. Rather, it's a tool to help programmers better do their job. I think it's easy to see why you're not using it. With few exceptions, advances in research take many years to percolate down to the industry. And of course the industry is famous for following trends without real understanding of anything. Anyway the review I linked to has some examples of real-world applications of program synthesis. Don't be afraid to read it- it's light on formal notation and you don't need special skills to understand it. I appreciate that it's a long document but there's a Table of Contents at the start and you should be able to skim through in a short time just to get a general idea of the subject. Anyway I can see you're trying to "wing it" and reason from first principles about something you know nothing about, in true SWE style. Yet, you don't know what you don't know, so you start from the wrong assumptions ("fully automated" etc) and arrive at the wrong conclusions. That's no way to understand anything. It's certainly not going to give you any good idea about what's going on in an entire field of research you know nothing about. Of course you're not obliged to know anything about program synthesis, but in that case, maybe consider sitting back and listening rather than expressing strong opinions with absolute conviction that is not supported by your knowledge? I think that will make a better conversation, and a better internet, for everyone.