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This is definitely the perspective of an academic - focused on the ideal at the expense of what's actually useful. Programming in natural language will definit

This is definitely the perspective of an academic - focused on the ideal at the expense of what's actually useful. Programming in natural language will definitely be less precise than programming in an actual programming language, but with the very beneficial tradeoff that a broader swathe of people can use it. I'm not a programmer, but I've been using GPT to write scripts to automate pulling data from my Shopify store for an ecommerce business for reporting purposes. I'm sure that professor would be disgusted by the code, but the thing is... it works. In my case, using natural language via GPT to create the script is obviously superior to any programming language. To write it myself in Python, I'd have to learn Python. Alternatively, I could hire a developer to do it, but then I'd have to write a product spec for them to implement, which takes just as much time as writing that same level of detailed spec and giving it to GPT (less, because I can half-ass the spec initially and iterate as I go with no communication overhead). Then, of course, I'd have to pay the developer. And while the results might be better in some very theoretical sense of code quality, in practice they would be the same, because the script would do the thing I need it to do without breaking anything. There's a reason there's more than one programming language - each has upsides and downsides. As natural language becomes a programming language, it will have the upside of broad accessibility with the downside of relatively low precision. The good news for the author is that you don't have to use it.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> To write it myself in Python, I'd have to learn Python. Yes, you need to learn a programming language in order to be able to program in that language, it takes a long time, and a lot of hard work to do it, and there are no shortcuts: https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html And yes, with ChatGPT et al you can get the job done without paying the cost of learning the language - albeit you can only do that in a very limited way because the performance of systems like ChatGPT in programming, when evaluated systematically (rather than listening to peoples' subjective opinions about it) is always very poor (and not in a "very theoretical sense of code quality", but in the sense of code that just doesn't do the job). But my question is: ChatGPT is one product, by one company, that isn't even particularly tailored to the programming task. Are you really comfortable handing off your ability to write programs and create applications to one product, owned by one company? Doesn't that just completely take away your independence and even your choice of what you can program?
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  > the performance of systems like ChatGPT in programming, when evaluated systematically (rather than listening to peoples' subjective opinions about it) is always very poor (and not in a "very theoretical sense of code quality", but in the sense of code that just doesn't do the job). I feel like you didn't read what I wrote. I used ChatGPT to write a script. It takes information from Shopify and writes it to a reporting spreadsheet in a way that I used to do manually. It literally does do the job - that was the whole point of my comment. You couldn't do the job any better, because the job is already done perfectly - it fulfills 100% of what it needs to do. > Are you really comfortable handing off your ability to write programs and create applications to one product, owned by one company? Doesn't that just completely take away your independence and even your choice of what you can program? I cannot understand how you're getting to this point. I already can't program (at least not to any particularly useful standard), so how does using ChatGPT to program take away my independence? It gives me the ability to do more things than I could before without relying on others who can program - that's an increase in independence. And in terms of giving away my choice... no. I can still learn Python or any other language I choose. You're writing as though I've signed an exclusive programming rights contract with OpenAI. I'm just using their tool because it does what I need.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    OK, sorry if I misunderstood. I thought you needed to do more than to write one script, one time, and that's all.
- tester457 3y ago
  LLMs like ChatGPT are the modern gateway drug into programming. If ChatGPT removes some independence then users can always use Bard, or use an open source LLM eventually. > but in the sense of code that just doesn't do the job Regardless, people who are new to coding making useful work of it unattainable to them before. And soon with future versions of gpt the produced code will have a better quality anyway. > https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html 10,000 hours in programming is a romantic idea for most people in non-STEM professions. Most people need only a familiarity for writing small scripts that help them on their day to day, as they do not have the time to dedicate years or even months of their life to a new hobby. Unlike programmers attaining mastery over the span of 10 years, they are trying to reach mastery in their own field.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> To write it myself in Python, I'd have to learn Python. Yes, you need to learn a programming language in order to be able to program in that language, it takes a long time, and a lot of hard work to do it, and there are no shortcuts: https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html And yes, with ChatGPT et al you can get the job done without paying the cost of learning the language - albeit you can only do that in a very limited way because the performance of systems like ChatGPT in programming, when evaluated systematically (rather than listening to peoples' subjective opinions about it) is always very poor (and not in a "very theoretical sense of code quality", but in the sense of code that just doesn't do the job). But my question is: ChatGPT is one product, by one company, that isn't even particularly tailored to the programming task. Are you really comfortable handing off your ability to write programs and create applications to one product, owned by one company? Doesn't that just completely take away your independence and even your choice of what you can program?

idopmstuff 3y ago
> the performance of systems like ChatGPT in programming, when evaluated systematically (rather than listening to peoples' subjective opinions about it) is always very poor (and not in a "very theoretical sense of code quality", but in the sense of code that just doesn't do the job). I feel like you didn't read what I wrote. I used ChatGPT to write a script. It takes information from Shopify and writes it to a reporting spreadsheet in a way that I used to do manually. It literally does do the job - that was the whole point of my comment. You couldn't do the job any better, because the job is already done perfectly - it fulfills 100% of what it needs to do. > Are you really comfortable handing off your ability to write programs and create applications to one product, owned by one company? Doesn't that just completely take away your independence and even your choice of what you can program? I cannot understand how you're getting to this point. I already can't program (at least not to any particularly useful standard), so how does using ChatGPT to program take away my independence? It gives me the ability to do more things than I could before without relying on others who can program - that's an increase in independence. And in terms of giving away my choice... no. I can still learn Python or any other language I choose. You're writing as though I've signed an exclusive programming rights contract with OpenAI. I'm just using their tool because it does what I need.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  OK, sorry if I misunderstood. I thought you needed to do more than to write one script, one time, and that's all.
tester457 3y ago
LLMs like ChatGPT are the modern gateway drug into programming. If ChatGPT removes some independence then users can always use Bard, or use an open source LLM eventually. > but in the sense of code that just doesn't do the job Regardless, people who are new to coding making useful work of it unattainable to them before. And soon with future versions of gpt the produced code will have a better quality anyway. > https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html 10,000 hours in programming is a romantic idea for most people in non-STEM professions. Most people need only a familiarity for writing small scripts that help them on their day to day, as they do not have the time to dedicate years or even months of their life to a new hobby. Unlike programmers attaining mastery over the span of 10 years, they are trying to reach mastery in their own field.