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"... In fact, this is already happening, in part because programmers increasingly rely on 'self-correcting' code—that is, code that debugs and rewrites itself .
by jgable 12y ago
"... In fact, this is already happening, in part because programmers increasingly rely on 'self-correcting' code—that is, code that debugs and rewrites itself ..."
What on earth is the author talking about? I've never heard of self-correcting code, certainly never used it, and can't find a reasonable reference to it with a google search. Is he mistakenly referring to "Error-Correcting Code", that is, using redundancy in data storage or transmission to catch and correct for random bit flips?
- coderzach 12y agoI can't believe the hubris of the tech industry. I bet no one even considers the danger that their ECC RAM becomes self-aware.
- mromanuk 12y agoHype article with FUD
- danso 12y agoWow, my opinion of the editing process at the New York Review of Books has just dropped, by a lot. It's not just that it's a bizarre claim, but that it's also stated so matter-of-factly. Honestly, the writer probably talked to a coder friend who uses an IDE, and the way the coder described auto-completion and type-checking extensions sounded very much like "self-correcting" code. No matter what you think of difficulties of the Turing halting problem, I'd say that writers depend --and can benefit -- far more on "self-correcting" writing (particularly auto-correct) than programmers do on self-correcting code.
- gtirloni 12y agoI think you're overreacting. The author could well be talking about neural nets, deep learning, etc. We may choose to nitpick or discuss the overall point.
- mturmon 12y agoWhen anyone critiques information technology who is not already in the community, we seem to prefer to nitpick.
- arikrak 12y agoThat could be the next part "machines that are able to learn on the job", but that's not "code that debugs and rewrites itself".
- ihsw 12y agoIt's not a far stretch that laymen conflate "code" with "statistical learning algorithms."
- pbadger27 12y agoI googled 'self-correcting code' because I thought the same thing! Definitely a bizarre claim.
- jimfleming 12y agoPerhaps linters, auto-formatters, auto-complete, etc. I could understand that it could look like "self-correcting code" to a non-programmer.
- dataker 12y agoAnalogously , "journalists rely on 'self-correcting' articles - that is, an article that 'debugs' and rewrites itself...".
- compbio 12y agohttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clegoues/docs/legoues-icse09.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clegoues/docs/legoues-icse09.pdf "Automatically Finding Patches Using Genetic Programming ... We introduce a fully automated method for locating and repairing bugs in software" http://dijkstra.cs.virginia.edu/genprog/ http://dijkstra.cs.virginia.edu/genprog/ Though I think the author was talking more about coding up a neural net, where it can be said that the net learns the features itself, and optimizes a loss function, without much reliance on a superviser.
- suby 12y agoPerhaps he's talking about compilers optimizing code?
- zvrba 12y agoGiven the level of cluelesness needed to write something like this, I'd guess that he's referring to smart Java and C# IDEs. To somebody clueless, all this automatic refactoring, code cleanup suggestions, stylistic fixes, etc. could look like "code that debugs and rewrites itself".