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> "Code has always been expensive. Producing a few hundred lines of clean, tested code takes most software developers a full day or more. Many of our engineerin
by hansmayer 8mo ago
> "Code has always been expensive. Producing a few hundred lines of clean, tested code takes most software developers a full day or more. Many of our engineering habits, at both the macro and micro level, are built around this core constraint."
Well, yes and no. While producing two screens worth of high quality code, a.k.a. software engineering was always expensive, "coding" as such, as in producing Nth React SPA or merely typing out code that you engineered in your head, was never that expensive - most of the work is applying existing patterns. But either way, as you wrote the code yourself, you mostly had a consistent mental model of how your code should work and the key contribution was evolving this model, first in your head, then in typing out code. Now here comes the real problem for the LLMs: I think most of us would be fine if the LLMs could actually just type out the code for us after we engineered it in our heads and explained it to the LLM in English language. Alas, they do produce some sort of code, but not always, or often enough not in a way we desribed it. So unfortunately "AI" boosters like Simon are reverting back to the argument of fast code generation and an appeal to us as unwilling adopters, to "change our ways", as it shows they have no real advantage of the LLMs to put forward - its only ever the "coding" speed and an appeal to us as professionals to "adapt", i.e. serve as cleaners of LLM sh*t. Where is the superintelligence we were promised and single-person-billion dollar unicorns, unique use cases etc? Are you telling us again these are just advanced text generators, Simon?
- simonw 8mo ago> I think most of us would be fine if the LLMs could actually just type out the code for us after we engineered it in our heads and explained it to the LLM in English language. Alas, they do produce some sort of code, but not always, or often enough not in a way we desribed it. That's exactly what they do for me - especially since the November model releases (GPT-5.1, Opus 4.5). > Where is the superintelligence we were promised and single-person-billion dollar unicorns, unique use cases etc? Are you telling us again these are just advanced text generators, Simon? I never promised anyone a superintelligence, or single-person-billion dollar unicorns. I do think these things are just advanced text generators, albeit the word "just" is doing a whole lot of work in that sentence.
- hansmayer 8mo ago> That's exactly what they do for me - especially since the November model releases (GPT-5.1, Opus 4.5). I mean it's inherently impossible, given the statistical nature of LLMs, so I am not sure are you claiming this out of ignorance or other interests, but again, what you claim is impossible due to the very nature of LLMs.
- lunar_mycroft 8mo agoIt's impossible for human developers too. Natural language descriptions of a program are either much more painful and time consuming to write than the code they describe, or contain some degree of ambiguity which the thing translating the description into code has to resolve (and the probability of the resolution the entity writing the description would have chosen and the one entity translating it into code chose matching perfectly approach zero). It can make sense to trade off some amount of control for productivity, but the tradeoff is inherent as soon as a project moves beyond a single developer hand writing all of the code.
- hansmayer 8mo agoI agree - the whole BS of "Hottest new programming language is English" is complete nonsense. There is something about writing the code directly from your mind that skips over the "language circuits" and makes it much more precise. Perhaps as humans with education we obtain an ability to think in programming language itself I suppose? It's probably similar to what happens in the mind of a composer or painter. This is why the natural language will never be the interface the big "AI" companies are making it to be.
- simonw 8mo agoIt's impossible, and yet I experience it on a daily basis. YMMV. I've had a lot of practice at prompting.
- hansmayer 8mo ago> YMMV. I've had a lot of practice at prompting. Ah, the old "you suck at prompting" angle again, isn't it? If you're going to shill this hard, at least come up with something new and original, this is sounding more than desperate.