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So we will have some abstract language that will allow business people to define what software should do and on that base AI will generate source code and worki

So we will have some abstract language that will allow business people to define what software should do and on that base AI will generate source code and working project. Wait, wait, I have heard that it was called BPMN and it generated underneath Enterprise Java Beans and it was working amazingly, all software is written today, right? Right? But, but nobody touches this crap besides generating pictures to show on Powerpoint slides. Because writing software is circa 10% of all effort, specification, legal stuff, maintenance, avoiding technical debt, proper test cases, anomaly testing, performance testing the right stuff. That is hard, that matters. Software 2.0 is barking the wrong tree.

Anuiran 4y ago
A step beyond that, Software 2.0 and beyond does not generate source code. Your app simply lives in the LLM.
- goatlover 4y ago
  I'm wondering how the LLM will be able to make use of hardware, or handle high demand. Can it be relied on to have data integrity?
marcus_holmes 4y ago
And COBOL before that. The goal of COBOL was to allow a non-technical business person to describe the problem in English and that description could be used as the basis of the program. Needless to say it didn't work. Accurately describing what a program should do is what a programmer does. We're not telling the computer what to do (move this value from memory into this register, etc). We're describing a program's behaviour. So I think we'll just get another language that is a good fit for describing what the program should do, and instead of compiling that to machine code, it will be used to train a model.
- hwayne 4y ago
  COBOL actually worked pretty well for its time. The ultimate reason COBOL died was because it was a first generation language that nobody really iterated on. It's similar to how most of us don't use FORTRAN, ALGOL, or LISP 1.5. Unlike those, COBOL didn't have the backing of the "tech world" (at the time, IBM and universities), so it doesn't have descendant languages we do use.
  - dgb23 4y ago
    > COBOL actually worked pretty well for its time. It was still programmers using the language. Same story with SQL. The only things you can give people who don't invest a substantial amount of time and effort into the craft are markup languages and very high level (configuration) DSLs.
    - edanm 4y ago
      > It was still programmers using the language. Same story with SQL. What are you talking about? Vast swaths of non-programmers are using SQL every day. Unless you consider anyone who writes SQL to be a programmer, in which case what you say is true by definition.
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    I don't understand why it didn't have the backing of the "tech world" and yet billions (if not trillions) of lines of COBOL are still being executed today? When I first joined the industry, back in the early 90's, COBOL was very much the premier business coding language, and I think that only changed with the arrival of Java. Can you explain further?
roflyear 4y ago
BPMN is so far gone, when execs suggest using it they ONLY mean for the workflow charts - not actually executing workflows or allowing business folk to create new workflows! So it is really confusing because they are only evaluating "pretty pictures" and you're evaluating the technical requirements of the tool (to do what it was built for) and you mismatch.
majkinetor 4y ago
> writing software is circa 10% of all effort, specification, legal stuff, maintenance, avoiding technical debt, proper test cases, anomaly testing, performance testing the right stuff. That is hard, that matters. Software 2.0 is barking the wrong tree. Exactly. For serious projects (not to do lists) u will need humans, or equivalent (AI that is grown like one).
thefourthchime 4y ago
Do you know that scene in "Office Space" where that guy says: "What is it that you do here?" and he says: "I take the specifications and hand them to the software engineers". I think our jobs are about to approach that a lot more closely than you might think. Our jobs will be effective translators between what the business wants and what the AI outputs.
- deeviant 4y ago
  Need to add "AI Whisperer" to my resume...
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  Switch "AI" and "compiler" and you describe exactly what a programmer does.
  - roncesvalles 4y ago
    Exactly. ChatGPT is just a compiler for the low-precision programming language known as English. In programming we can always make a tradeoff between precision and effort, e.g. by importing libraries or using no-code or code-generation tools. ChatGPT is just one more point on the same tradeoff curve. It hasn't meaningfully moved the curve itself. Moving the curve would mean making it less effortful to write code at the same level of precision.
deeviant 4y ago
The Apple Newton table computer was a complete disaster and thus all tablet computing devices thereafter will always suck, yes?
layer8 4y ago
Tangentially, it would have been fun if Copilot and ChatGPT existed two decades ago when EJB was all the rage.

Anuiran 4y ago

A step beyond that, Software 2.0 and beyond does not generate source code. Your app simply lives in the LLM.

goatlover 4y ago
I'm wondering how the LLM will be able to make use of hardware, or handle high demand. Can it be relied on to have data integrity?

marcus_holmes 4y ago

And COBOL before that. The goal of COBOL was to allow a non-technical business person to describe the problem in English and that description could be used as the basis of the program. Needless to say it didn't work. Accurately describing what a program should do is what a programmer does. We're not telling the computer what to do (move this value from memory into this register, etc). We're describing a program's behaviour. So I think we'll just get another language that is a good fit for describing what the program should do, and instead of compiling that to machine code, it will be used to train a model.

hwayne 4y ago
COBOL actually worked pretty well for its time. The ultimate reason COBOL died was because it was a first generation language that nobody really iterated on. It's similar to how most of us don't use FORTRAN, ALGOL, or LISP 1.5. Unlike those, COBOL didn't have the backing of the "tech world" (at the time, IBM and universities), so it doesn't have descendant languages we do use.
- dgb23 4y ago
  > COBOL actually worked pretty well for its time. It was still programmers using the language. Same story with SQL. The only things you can give people who don't invest a substantial amount of time and effort into the craft are markup languages and very high level (configuration) DSLs.
  - edanm 4y ago
    > It was still programmers using the language. Same story with SQL. What are you talking about? Vast swaths of non-programmers are using SQL every day. Unless you consider anyone who writes SQL to be a programmer, in which case what you say is true by definition.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  I don't understand why it didn't have the backing of the "tech world" and yet billions (if not trillions) of lines of COBOL are still being executed today? When I first joined the industry, back in the early 90's, COBOL was very much the premier business coding language, and I think that only changed with the arrival of Java. Can you explain further?

roflyear 4y ago

BPMN is so far gone, when execs suggest using it they ONLY mean for the workflow charts - not actually executing workflows or allowing business folk to create new workflows! So it is really confusing because they are only evaluating "pretty pictures" and you're evaluating the technical requirements of the tool (to do what it was built for) and you mismatch.

majkinetor 4y ago

> writing software is circa 10% of all effort, specification, legal stuff, maintenance, avoiding technical debt, proper test cases, anomaly testing, performance testing the right stuff. That is hard, that matters. Software 2.0 is barking the wrong tree. Exactly. For serious projects (not to do lists) u will need humans, or equivalent (AI that is grown like one).

thefourthchime 4y ago

Do you know that scene in "Office Space" where that guy says: "What is it that you do here?" and he says: "I take the specifications and hand them to the software engineers". I think our jobs are about to approach that a lot more closely than you might think. Our jobs will be effective translators between what the business wants and what the AI outputs.

deeviant 4y ago
Need to add "AI Whisperer" to my resume...
marcus_holmes 4y ago
Switch "AI" and "compiler" and you describe exactly what a programmer does.
- roncesvalles 4y ago
  Exactly. ChatGPT is just a compiler for the low-precision programming language known as English. In programming we can always make a tradeoff between precision and effort, e.g. by importing libraries or using no-code or code-generation tools. ChatGPT is just one more point on the same tradeoff curve. It hasn't meaningfully moved the curve itself. Moving the curve would mean making it less effortful to write code at the same level of precision.

deeviant 4y ago

The Apple Newton table computer was a complete disaster and thus all tablet computing devices thereafter will always suck, yes?

layer8 4y ago

Tangentially, it would have been fun if Copilot and ChatGPT existed two decades ago when EJB was all the rage.