3 ms·

Yes. And indeed, abstraction is not what LLMs are offering.

• coldtea 5mo ago
  It very much is. But it's a non-deterministic, more-lossy-than-usual abstraction: english to code.
  • eikenberry 5mo ago
    2 different meanings of abstraction at work here.
    • coldtea 5mo ago
      Nope, the same single meaning. English to program is the same kind of abstraction as going from assembly to program to C to program to high level scripting to "4G languages" and so on, and hiding all kinds of details behind a much terser layer. It's just that it's a qualitative jump at it. Here's a ChatGPT provided answer asked to "define abstraction in programming, like when going from assembly to C to scripting, etc": "Abstraction in programming is the process of building layers where each layer hides the details of the layer below".
      • eikenberry 5mo ago
        In math/computers abstraction has a technical meaning that requires deterministic behavior for the abstraction to work. It isn't a proper abstraction if it doesn't always do the same thing underneath. Abstraction as a layering idea without regard to how it works is like the pop-pych version in that it is "right" but misses nuance.