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Those are all syntactic changes, AI attempts to be semantic, totally different.

• CharlesW 10mo ago
  The examples are semantic shifts. Assembler → C wasn't just a syntax swap (functions are semantic units, types are meaning, compilation is optimization reasoning, etc.). "Rename this symbol safely across a project" is a semantic transformation. And of course, autocomplete is semantic. AI represents a difference in degree, but not kind. Like the examples cited by the parent, AI further moves us from lower-level semantics to higher-level semantics.
  • monkaiju 10mo ago
    Fair enough that semantic might not be the best word, but the point is that none of those tools attempt to actually do anything involving _understanding_, thats all for the human. Autocomplete is based on heuristics that are replicable given the same inputs, LLM-based AI is not. Your instructions are not "compiled" like in languages, they're mathsticated