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Coding expertise is going to collapse from compiler reliance (1985 Turbo Pascal detractors)

• larsfaye 1mo ago
  Do you think LLMs and compilers have a lot of overlap?
  • sampullman 1mo ago
    In an abstract sense, yes. Compilers let programmers work at a higher level of abstraction. LLMs bring it to an even higher level, though the abstraction is much leakier. For the time being, a good understanding of programming and domain knowledge gets you much farther than without it. There might not be room for as many (professional) programmers as before, though.
  • Daishiman 1mo ago
    Almost nobody knows how to program in assembly but we're doing fine.
    • larsfaye 1mo ago
      That's because the institutional knowledge was passed along through the act of coding. Skills that I learned in Assembly and FORTRAN are applicable to even modern programming languages...but not to "natural language."
      • svachalek 1mo ago
        It really wasn't. Ask the average young coder these days how many registers their CPU has, or even the difference between the stack and the heap.
      • Daishiman 1mo ago
        I don't agree. Certain optimization skills are learned on the job if people work in specific areas of compilers or performance. Also the reality is that modern CPU microarchitectures are so different from what old-school assembly programmers used that their supposed optimizations are likely to be counterproductive.