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Using an LLM isn't analogous to using a higher level language.
by wtetzner 5mo ago
Using an LLM isn't analogous to using a higher level language.
- brabel 5mo agoThat’s funny because it’s exactly, literally the same. The difference is it’s not deterministic. That may be a problem but it’s still a higher level language, just a much higher level language than anything before.
- xigoi 5mo agoThe main difference is that the input to an LLM is in an ambiguous language.
- brabel 5mo agoA programming language is allowed to be ambiguous, I don’t know of a definition that excludes that!
- xigoi 5mo agoAll programming languages I know of provide at least some guarantees about the program’s behavior.
- skydhash 5mo agoThe language specs may be, but an implementation is never ambiguous. When you encounter and undefined behavior in the specs, that’s when you look at your compiler/interpreter docs.
- a_shiine 5mo agoThe kinda thoughts you form when you ever only vibe-coded
- newswasboring 5mo agoSo is JavaScript haha.
- bigstrat2003 5mo ago> That’s funny because it’s exactly, literally the same. The difference is it’s not deterministic. So it is not, by your own admission, "exactly, literally the same".
- amoss 5mo agoTake it gently, the poor thing doesn't understand the difference between code and talking about code.
- wiseowise 5mo agoSo by your logic all the PMs, managers and customers are programmers, right? After all, there’s a human compiler that takes their input and produces a program?
- brabel 5mo agoThey are programmers when they write a prompt and get runnable code as a result, yes… but no if asking a human to write the code because if you have an intermediate, manual step between the text and the running code, you don’t have an automated process and hence it’s no longer even an application, let alone a “compiler”.
- matt_kantor 5mo agoWhy does it matter if a human or a machine is responsible for turning the prompt into code? If there's a black box which I can send C code into one side of and get faithful machine code out the other, I'd call that box a "compiler". I wouldn't rename it if I later find out that there are little elves inside doing the translation.
- brabel 5mo agoSorry but that’s a childish take.
- matt_kantor 5mo agoWould you mind explaining why?
- sandrello 5mo agoI assume you're some sort of programmer and I genuinely wonder how in the world can someone in good faith downplay non-determinism and ambiguity when talking about a programming language. High-level languages can certainly yield inefficient code when compiled, or maybe different code among different compilers, but they're always meant to allow their users to know exactly what to expect from what they put together in their programs. I've always considered this a hard fact, I simply cannot wrap my head around working in a way that forces me to abandon this basic assumption.