5 ms·

Sure, if the natural language we're talking about is formalized to the point of basically being math. Let's not confuse that with "everyone will be able to pro

Sure, if the natural language we're talking about is formalized to the point of basically being math. Let's not confuse that with "everyone will be able to program", though.

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
I'd love if the ambiguities could be a dialogue of question/answer, rather than being fully specified ahead of time like we generally have programming today. It seems much more efficient.
- dools 3y ago
  That's what programming with ChatGPT is like.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
    Yep! And I'd bet that's a huge part of why it took off. An equally capable model with a "write a better prompt and try again" UX wouldn't be nearly as useful.
  - anothernewdude 3y ago
    A massive pain in the ass?
    - dools 3y ago
      Have you not spent much time working with ChatGPT? Or maybe you haven't upgraded to plus so you get GPT4? It's so fucking good. It's a bit like pair programming. Even though it can't always give you the result you want, it does so an appreciable percentage of the time and it's a fabulous way to think through problems, especially as a complement to the "google -> stackoverflow -> copy -> paste" style programming when you're trying things out or unsure of how to do something.
      - cookieperson 3y ago
        Do people actually do that much copy paste programming? People I work with are more inclined to read the docs and lean on intellisense. The people I've seen cling to chatgpt have been spending a lot of time forgetting LSPs exist and wondering why some hallucinated method doesn't exist... They also tend to think really long 1 liners are good code over explicit easy to read 3 liners...
        dools 3y ago
        > Do people actually do that much copy paste programming? So much: https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-actually-copy-and-paste-from-stack-overflow-now-we-know/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-ac...
        cookieperson 3y ago
        Yea but when you really look at the numbers most people are copy pasting git commands, npm package manager commands, warning suppression syntax, etc. That's not really programming and is a symptom that the tools people are using stink or that they don't use those features very often. Not to say there aren't millions of other copy pasted but most of the remaining ones seem to be about data science, which is again a good hint that an API is complicated, and the fallout there isn't too bad because as data scientists work they check their manipulations.
- grt_thr 3y ago
  The ambiguity is exponential. I wish that the people hyping on llms read the older literature and sentence parsing. The only reason why people are so impressed is that chatgpt sometimes gives better results than Google. Which just ought to tell you hiw bad google has gotten.
  - wolfgang42 3y ago
    Well, programmers provide a natural language interface and somehow we usually manage the ambiguity and complexity OK. In my experience, a lot of support requests for bespoke/in-house software go like this: > User: Why is my wibble being quarked? This shouldn’t be happening! > Dev: Wibble ID, please? > User: ID 234567. This is terrible! > Dev: [rummages in git blame] Well, this wibble is frobnicated, and three years ago [links to Slack thread] you said that all frobnicated wibbles should be automatically quarked. > User: Yes, but that was before we automated the Acme account. We never frobnicate their wibbles! > Dev: ...so, is there a way for me to tell if a client wants their wibbles unfrobnicated, or should I hard-code an exception for Acme? (And then, six months later: “Why are none of Acme’s wibbles being frobnicated automatically?”) If you could introduce an AI assistant that could answer these questions instantly (instead of starting with a support ticket), it’d cut the feedback loop from hours or days down to seconds, and the users (who are generally pretty smart in their field, even if my frustration is showing above) would have a much better resource for understanding the black box they’ve been given and why it works the way it does.
    - wolfgang42 3y ago
      Oops, only now do I realize that should have been “we never quark their wibbles” and “a client wants their wibbles unquarked.” (Hopefully doesn’t make a difference to comprehension since they’re nonsense words anyway, but there you go.)
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      > If you could introduce an AI assistant that could answer these questions instantly If you have some change documentation so good that you are able to answer that kind of question for things that a previous developer changed, you may have a chance of making the computer answer it. Personally, I have never seen the first part done.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Sounds like agile (small a) as opposed to waterfall.
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
Isn't ChatGPT (or some now not that far fetched futuristic version that's superior) a 5GL? You ask it for a program in English, and it codes it for you. You've just coded in natural language.
- takeda 3y ago
  I would love to see somebody writing a compiler that way.
  - n8cpdx 3y ago
    https://medium.com/@byanofsky/chatgpt-helped-me-build-a-compiler-7aebcd2a2c20 https://medium.com/@byanofsky/chatgpt-helped-me-build-a-comp...
  - ilaksh 3y ago
    The original version of my site aidev.codes was a bit like that. The concept was to keep refining the spec and each time it would regenerate starting with whatever section had been modified. There was even a way to clone an "app spec" like with Codepens. People generally didn't seem very interested. Also the bigger problem was that the gpt-3.5 models really wouldn't return the same thing consistently so a minor change could throw other things off. Also a conversation feels like a much more intuitive way of doing it. So I switched to that.
- goatlover 3y ago
  You still have to make sure the code runs correctly and incorporate it into the rest of the code base. You also need to have some idea of what sort of code you're asking for, particularly if it has to fit with existing code.
  - captnObvious 3y ago
    Check out chatgpt code interpreter. One step down…
- quickthrower2 3y ago
speed_spread 3y ago
It'll be the same way everybody can program with Excel right now. Things will work fine, until they don't anymore, at which point a professional will be brought in to help fix "the bug". Obviously, that bug will the obvious result of the whole thing being a horrible mess and will be unfixable without a proper rewrite. _Maybe_ the AI will be able to help with the rewrite, generating test cases and translating business logic, which would be nice.
- qumpis 3y ago
  I think many people give up too quickly (as could perceived by those professionals who had to put sweat when learning how to put things back when they break). But a capable language model might serve as a debugger: "you're stuck? About to call a professional? No worries, explain to me what you see and let me ask you questions in order to find a fix together"
  - noisy_boy 3y ago
    I think it'll evolve into the AI Assistant being an always-on/always-available app/service/client (ala Siri/Alexa) coupled with a much more powerful online service. Advantage is that once the client is installed, it has access to practically everything the user is doing (which is what the tech companies dream of) and can actually ingest the inputs without the user having to summarize/translate into a text box (problem with Excel? AI assistant can read the excel sheet that has the issue so you can just ask questions). I also think that the main two reasons behind Alexa/Siri not seeing very high adoption rates are misinterpretation of the voice commands + quality of results. With LLMs, at least the first issue should improve dramatically and if the popularity of ChatGPT is anything to go by, the second issue should also see improvements.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  I'd much rather program with the help of ChatGPT 4, as it is right now, over programming with Excel (I've done both). And at least on a smaller scale, the code generated by ChatGPT hasn't been a mess at all. Sometimes it's incorrect or insufficient and it can't handle the more complex solution I'm asking of it, but the code isn't messy and doesn't require me to rewrite it from scratch, just fix what's incorrect.
bee_rider 3y ago
I guess this will open up programming to anyone who can handle the math required to describe the behavior of a program. Unfortunately it is not even clear to me that this population is anywhere near as large as the existing population of programmers.
geysersam 3y ago
I don't see why you need a language "formalized to the point of math" to instruct a computer to follow simple instructions (Write a crud API for this and this, it should have these endpoints etc.) Of course there will be ambiguity, but you could say anything higher level than assembly is also ambiguous, but that's not usually a problem. I think it's reasonable to expect that more people will be able to program if this becomes reality. Just as going from assembly to c allowed more people to program.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Eh, I was using it to help generate animated backgrounds with various custom geometry and animations tonight for a game of mine, and it performed admirably but it was struggling a bit. I wouldn't mind if it had a bit more formalization to the point of math to it for those bits. Was still good enough that I got some usable options from it, though.

Sure, if the natural language we're talking about is formalized to the point of basically being math. Let's not confuse that with "everyone will be able to program", though.

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago

I'd love if the ambiguities could be a dialogue of question/answer, rather than being fully specified ahead of time like we generally have programming today. It seems much more efficient.

dools 3y ago
That's what programming with ChatGPT is like.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
  Yep! And I'd bet that's a huge part of why it took off. An equally capable model with a "write a better prompt and try again" UX wouldn't be nearly as useful.
- anothernewdude 3y ago
  A massive pain in the ass?
  - dools 3y ago
    Have you not spent much time working with ChatGPT? Or maybe you haven't upgraded to plus so you get GPT4? It's so fucking good. It's a bit like pair programming. Even though it can't always give you the result you want, it does so an appreciable percentage of the time and it's a fabulous way to think through problems, especially as a complement to the "google -> stackoverflow -> copy -> paste" style programming when you're trying things out or unsure of how to do something.
    - cookieperson 3y ago
      Do people actually do that much copy paste programming? People I work with are more inclined to read the docs and lean on intellisense. The people I've seen cling to chatgpt have been spending a lot of time forgetting LSPs exist and wondering why some hallucinated method doesn't exist... They also tend to think really long 1 liners are good code over explicit easy to read 3 liners...
      - dools 3y ago
        > Do people actually do that much copy paste programming? So much: https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-actually-copy-and-paste-from-stack-overflow-now-we-know/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-ac...
        cookieperson 3y ago
        Yea but when you really look at the numbers most people are copy pasting git commands, npm package manager commands, warning suppression syntax, etc. That's not really programming and is a symptom that the tools people are using stink or that they don't use those features very often. Not to say there aren't millions of other copy pasted but most of the remaining ones seem to be about data science, which is again a good hint that an API is complicated, and the fallout there isn't too bad because as data scientists work they check their manipulations.
grt_thr 3y ago
The ambiguity is exponential. I wish that the people hyping on llms read the older literature and sentence parsing. The only reason why people are so impressed is that chatgpt sometimes gives better results than Google. Which just ought to tell you hiw bad google has gotten.
- wolfgang42 3y ago
  Well, programmers provide a natural language interface and somehow we usually manage the ambiguity and complexity OK. In my experience, a lot of support requests for bespoke/in-house software go like this: > User: Why is my wibble being quarked? This shouldn’t be happening! > Dev: Wibble ID, please? > User: ID 234567. This is terrible! > Dev: [rummages in git blame] Well, this wibble is frobnicated, and three years ago [links to Slack thread] you said that all frobnicated wibbles should be automatically quarked. > User: Yes, but that was before we automated the Acme account. We never frobnicate their wibbles! > Dev: ...so, is there a way for me to tell if a client wants their wibbles unfrobnicated, or should I hard-code an exception for Acme? (And then, six months later: “Why are none of Acme’s wibbles being frobnicated automatically?”) If you could introduce an AI assistant that could answer these questions instantly (instead of starting with a support ticket), it’d cut the feedback loop from hours or days down to seconds, and the users (who are generally pretty smart in their field, even if my frustration is showing above) would have a much better resource for understanding the black box they’ve been given and why it works the way it does.
  - wolfgang42 3y ago
    Oops, only now do I realize that should have been “we never quark their wibbles” and “a client wants their wibbles unquarked.” (Hopefully doesn’t make a difference to comprehension since they’re nonsense words anyway, but there you go.)
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    > If you could introduce an AI assistant that could answer these questions instantly If you have some change documentation so good that you are able to answer that kind of question for things that a previous developer changed, you may have a chance of making the computer answer it. Personally, I have never seen the first part done.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Sounds like agile (small a) as opposed to waterfall.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago

Isn't ChatGPT (or some now not that far fetched futuristic version that's superior) a 5GL? You ask it for a program in English, and it codes it for you. You've just coded in natural language.

takeda 3y ago
I would love to see somebody writing a compiler that way.
- n8cpdx 3y ago
  https://medium.com/@byanofsky/chatgpt-helped-me-build-a-compiler-7aebcd2a2c20 https://medium.com/@byanofsky/chatgpt-helped-me-build-a-comp...
- ilaksh 3y ago
  The original version of my site aidev.codes was a bit like that. The concept was to keep refining the spec and each time it would regenerate starting with whatever section had been modified. There was even a way to clone an "app spec" like with Codepens. People generally didn't seem very interested. Also the bigger problem was that the gpt-3.5 models really wouldn't return the same thing consistently so a minor change could throw other things off. Also a conversation feels like a much more intuitive way of doing it. So I switched to that.
goatlover 3y ago
You still have to make sure the code runs correctly and incorporate it into the rest of the code base. You also need to have some idea of what sort of code you're asking for, particularly if it has to fit with existing code.
- captnObvious 3y ago
  Check out chatgpt code interpreter. One step down…
quickthrower2 3y ago

speed_spread 3y ago

It'll be the same way everybody can program with Excel right now. Things will work fine, until they don't anymore, at which point a professional will be brought in to help fix "the bug". Obviously, that bug will the obvious result of the whole thing being a horrible mess and will be unfixable without a proper rewrite. _Maybe_ the AI will be able to help with the rewrite, generating test cases and translating business logic, which would be nice.

qumpis 3y ago
I think many people give up too quickly (as could perceived by those professionals who had to put sweat when learning how to put things back when they break). But a capable language model might serve as a debugger: "you're stuck? About to call a professional? No worries, explain to me what you see and let me ask you questions in order to find a fix together"
- noisy_boy 3y ago
  I think it'll evolve into the AI Assistant being an always-on/always-available app/service/client (ala Siri/Alexa) coupled with a much more powerful online service. Advantage is that once the client is installed, it has access to practically everything the user is doing (which is what the tech companies dream of) and can actually ingest the inputs without the user having to summarize/translate into a text box (problem with Excel? AI assistant can read the excel sheet that has the issue so you can just ask questions). I also think that the main two reasons behind Alexa/Siri not seeing very high adoption rates are misinterpretation of the voice commands + quality of results. With LLMs, at least the first issue should improve dramatically and if the popularity of ChatGPT is anything to go by, the second issue should also see improvements.
cableshaft 3y ago
I'd much rather program with the help of ChatGPT 4, as it is right now, over programming with Excel (I've done both). And at least on a smaller scale, the code generated by ChatGPT hasn't been a mess at all. Sometimes it's incorrect or insufficient and it can't handle the more complex solution I'm asking of it, but the code isn't messy and doesn't require me to rewrite it from scratch, just fix what's incorrect.

bee_rider 3y ago

I guess this will open up programming to anyone who can handle the math required to describe the behavior of a program. Unfortunately it is not even clear to me that this population is anywhere near as large as the existing population of programmers.

geysersam 3y ago

I don't see why you need a language "formalized to the point of math" to instruct a computer to follow simple instructions (Write a crud API for this and this, it should have these endpoints etc.) Of course there will be ambiguity, but you could say anything higher level than assembly is also ambiguous, but that's not usually a problem. I think it's reasonable to expect that more people will be able to program if this becomes reality. Just as going from assembly to c allowed more people to program.

cableshaft 3y ago
Eh, I was using it to help generate animated backgrounds with various custom geometry and animations tonight for a game of mine, and it performed admirably but it was struggling a bit. I wouldn't mind if it had a bit more formalization to the point of math to it for those bits. Was still good enough that I got some usable options from it, though.