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I've thought about this issue so very many times, and I feel that until someone creates a system capable of understanding the underlying purpose of the code, we

I've thought about this issue so very many times, and I feel that until someone creates a system capable of understanding the underlying purpose of the code, we will not be able to automate this stuff away. I think the issue is that all of the things the author wants a breakthrough for is exactly what makes programming hard. We don't have systems intelligent enough to reason about a contract between two systems so as to create a general-purpose solution for things like glue code. The subtle differences that are there and that require us to do this work over and over again with small variations are precisely why programming requires intelligence.

082349872349872 4y ago
Part of the "structured programming" revolution was that the compilers said "any color you want, as long as it's black": they were general-purpose glue code generators by declaring everything to use the standard contract. (later, optimizing, compilers would spend a lot of effort to reason about different contracts, and in recent times, "undefined behavior" would come to surprise people who were used to the rather laxer approach to contracts in earlier days, but these are epicycles.) There will always be work doing things over and over again with small variations, but I for one am glad to no longer be making variations on decisions like "will this parameter be coming in a register (which?) or on the stack (and if so, with what alignment)?"
w10-1 4y ago
Charles Simyoni's Intentional Software attempted systems "capable of understanding the underlying purpose" targeted at both programmers and business people. It was (hidden) parameterization all the way down. They invested several engineer decades and got no where. Microsoft bought them out for their patents.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> we will not be able to automate this stuff away We can't even automate testing of code (no matter how much "test automation" you have, you have manual testers too). That's orders of magnitude easier than automating the creation of the code in the first place.

082349872349872 4y ago

Part of the "structured programming" revolution was that the compilers said "any color you want, as long as it's black": they were general-purpose glue code generators by declaring everything to use the standard contract. (later, optimizing, compilers would spend a lot of effort to reason about different contracts, and in recent times, "undefined behavior" would come to surprise people who were used to the rather laxer approach to contracts in earlier days, but these are epicycles.) There will always be work doing things over and over again with small variations, but I for one am glad to no longer be making variations on decisions like "will this parameter be coming in a register (which?) or on the stack (and if so, with what alignment)?"

w10-1 4y ago

Charles Simyoni's Intentional Software attempted systems "capable of understanding the underlying purpose" targeted at both programmers and business people. It was (hidden) parameterization all the way down. They invested several engineer decades and got no where. Microsoft bought them out for their patents.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> we will not be able to automate this stuff away We can't even automate testing of code (no matter how much "test automation" you have, you have manual testers too). That's orders of magnitude easier than automating the creation of the code in the first place.