3 ms·

But everyone does pay for dumb code. Even in the best-written and most efficient codebases, there's still going to be some amount of tedious glue code and boile

But everyone does pay for dumb code. Even in the best-written and most efficient codebases, there's still going to be some amount of tedious glue code and boilerplate that you have to write in order to create a functioning product. It definitely would be better to have better languages and frameworks instead of a giant transformer, but the better languages and frameworks don't exist yet while the giant transformer does.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> there's still going to be some amount of tedious glue code and boilerplate that you have to write in order to create a functioning product. This is true, but actually tedious glue code is often non-trivial. For example, in one of my hobby projects I have a repo where I have to write a lot of glue code to schlepp data from a CSV file format into an existing database. Doing this correctly requires reading through the (lengthy) documentation for the format of both the CSV data and also the system that ingests the database, since there are a bunch invariants about the key tables and columns that aren't enforceable in SQL (and obviously not enforceable in the CSV). This is the sort of glue code/boilerplate where a synthesizer that can understand natural language would be actually helpful. > but the better languages and frameworks don't exist yet There are certainly some languages that are less verbose than others. Java and Go are very boilerplate-y languages. Python is also pretty verbose and inexpressive for certain types of code. The typescript example on the copilot page right now is a prefect example of "ugh just use a better language". The examples of boilerplate where copilot shines seem like situations where really simply using "snippets" would work better. E.g., everything on the copilot homepage right now.
- lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  >Java and Go are very boilerplate-y languages. And because of the nature of boilerplate, Java has IDEs that will both generate and modify this boilerplate without thought, no AI required. I don't remember the last time I typed the text 'class' for example. Instead I type "new Foo(someStringVar)", and then hit Alt-Enter and my IDE creates the file, the `class Foo` along with a ctor that takes a String.
noduerme 5y ago
Even in different versions of the same project, the glue may change. E.g. my boilerplate functions for making ajax calls have changed half a dozen times since 2005, been gutted and rewritten to be promosified, upgrade to websockets, and all sorts of other options, but I still have projects deployed that use several previous versions. And my typical PHP or Node executor has evolved, too. I myself find it confusing when working new bits into older projects where I'll occasionally match the wrong gateway code with the wrong frontend. In other words, a machine looking at only my own glue would be more likely to mismatch or use the wrong version in any given situation.

throwawaygh 5y ago

> there's still going to be some amount of tedious glue code and boilerplate that you have to write in order to create a functioning product. This is true, but actually tedious glue code is often non-trivial. For example, in one of my hobby projects I have a repo where I have to write a lot of glue code to schlepp data from a CSV file format into an existing database. Doing this correctly requires reading through the (lengthy) documentation for the format of both the CSV data and also the system that ingests the database, since there are a bunch invariants about the key tables and columns that aren't enforceable in SQL (and obviously not enforceable in the CSV). This is the sort of glue code/boilerplate where a synthesizer that can understand natural language would be actually helpful. > but the better languages and frameworks don't exist yet There are certainly some languages that are less verbose than others. Java and Go are very boilerplate-y languages. Python is also pretty verbose and inexpressive for certain types of code. The typescript example on the copilot page right now is a prefect example of "ugh just use a better language". The examples of boilerplate where copilot shines seem like situations where really simply using "snippets" would work better. E.g., everything on the copilot homepage right now.

lowbloodsugar 5y ago
>Java and Go are very boilerplate-y languages. And because of the nature of boilerplate, Java has IDEs that will both generate and modify this boilerplate without thought, no AI required. I don't remember the last time I typed the text 'class' for example. Instead I type "new Foo(someStringVar)", and then hit Alt-Enter and my IDE creates the file, the `class Foo` along with a ctor that takes a String.

noduerme 5y ago

Even in different versions of the same project, the glue may change. E.g. my boilerplate functions for making ajax calls have changed half a dozen times since 2005, been gutted and rewritten to be promosified, upgrade to websockets, and all sorts of other options, but I still have projects deployed that use several previous versions. And my typical PHP or Node executor has evolved, too. I myself find it confusing when working new bits into older projects where I'll occasionally match the wrong gateway code with the wrong frontend. In other words, a machine looking at only my own glue would be more likely to mismatch or use the wrong version in any given situation.