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> If you define a grammar for a new programming language and feed it to an LLM and give it NO EXAMPLES can it write code in your language? Neither does your av
by motorest 1y ago
> If you define a grammar for a new programming language and feed it to an LLM and give it NO EXAMPLES can it write code in your language?
Neither does your average human. What's your point?
- yusina 1y agoThat's the bar now? Some tech is great if the average human is worse at it?
- Dylan16807 1y agoThere are lots of bars depending on context. But being better than an average human is usually one of the higher bars.
- catlifeonmars 1y agoWell it depends. For example, calculators have been around for a while and a calculator that only performs better than the average human is not very useful. Sorting algorithms are another example. Autocomplete/intellisense in an IDE is probably the most salient example. An autocomplete that performs _as well_ as the average programmer is, well, totally useless.
- Dylan16807 1y agoI'm not sure what you mean. Autocomplete usually just gives a big list of options for the next word, so even getting the most relevant ones to the top would be helpful in less-memorized codebases, and actually filling out entire lines as well as an average programmer is not useless at all.
- catlifeonmars 1y agoOh I agree about filling out entire lines. I use copilot to write boilerplate based on a template pattern I provide all the time. It’s not very precise though. Autocomplete will give me a list of valid APIs for current given version of any library sorted by most recently used with a locality bonus. Copilot on the other hand does not have that level of precision. Two different tools that I use for slightly different things.