it's called prolog
Will humans write code in 2040?
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Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#12I mostly get downvoted for questioning the AI hype, but I never tried it here in HN. The paper is... how I put it mildly... not in the realm of making sense. They mention simple question answering (which still stumbles at more complex even if structured questions), then code generators that existed since 1980s (at least) and then pretend that it's the same. Today's AI is about approximating human judgment from datase…
I think it is not about AI but about improving our work with new tools. There are zillion developers doing the same thing everyday with the same mistakes and a lot of this work can be encapsulated at different abstraction levels.
I agree, the level of abstractions will just change. We might end up writing something more like formal logic in a declarative language and the AI will then implement and optimise it.
Kind of the way a compiler generates optimised machine code from our higher level languages now.
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#13I think Humans will be writing code 40 years from now but not as they do today as natural language processing will get far enough that you could tell an AI what you require and then it will write the code for you. When a tech advances the number of its users increases but the % that understand its internals drop. Programming is no special flake to be protected from it the same will happen to it. We are already getting small hints of this with specialized algorithms that optimize code or find bugs
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#14I think they will and the paper is too naive when assuming the techniques can scale and that computers can do the translation from a vague list of requirements to a precise specification. This comic[1] explains the issue well I think. There is a lot of hot new research going on in program synthesis, most of the stuff I see is about either of:
- Programming by example where we give some example inputs and outputs and let the machine synthesize a program generalizing the input-output function. It works well for small, pure mathematical functions with not so many subtle edge cases but I don't think we can make it work for the edge cases as easily, at least without human intervention that will be analogous to programming the synthesizer.
- Synthesis from specification, we give a tight spec of the function we want and all the available functions then ask the computer to synthesize the program. Some researchers made some very cool examples of this work by e.g. taking specifications encoded with dependent types and generating conforming programs. The catch here is that, if the spec is not precise enough, you may end up with a non-conforming function and who is going to write such a precise spec? The programmer!
[1]: http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensiv...?
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#15Programmers have been trying to make programmers redundant for as long as our industry has existed but made very little progress in doing so, none if you don't count productivity improvements.
I'm yet to see a codeless platform that can handle anything more complicated than a sick leave form.
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is not about AI but about improving our work with new tools. There are zillion developers doing the same thing everyday with the same mistakes and a lot of this work can be encapsulated at different abstraction levels.
I agree, the level of abstractions will just change. We might end up writing something more like formal logic in a declarative language and the AI will then implement and optimise it. Kind of the way a compiler generates optimised machine code from our higher level languages now.
Doubtful, debugging would be so hard at that point. I think we’ve already reached peak abstraction where we are right now, and more indirect forms of programming will be increasingly non-viable.
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#17that machines, instead of humans, will write most of their own code by 2040
Regardless of whether it actually happens, a future where humans can no longer have meaningfully detailed control over what machines do (to them), sounds extremely dystopian and certainly much sci-fi has been based on that vision, so I hope it doesn't happen...
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is not about AI but about improving our work with new tools. There are zillion developers doing the same thing everyday with the same mistakes and a lot of this work can be encapsulated at different abstraction levels.
I agree, the level of abstractions will just change. We might end up writing something more like formal logic in a declarative language and the AI will then implement and optimise it. Kind of the way a compiler generates optimised machine code from our higher level languages now.
Also don’t forget - we still have to write certain routines in Assembly even after so many years. Number of abstraction layers doesn’t mean complete automation.
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#19The more I think of this, the more the only counter-argument seems to be natural language not being precise enough. But all coding tasks start with a natural language description at one point. Hmmm.
Re: Will humans write code in 2040?
#20Feels like one of those particular/general cases. In particular, few people routinely code in assembler any more. I imagine you can do degree-level courses in "computing" which don't even go there. I know you can do courses with no VLSI or microelectronics, both of which were required subjects on many courses at one point.
So yes, in particular terms, we don't do things which machines (programming language compilers, VHDL->VLSI compilers) can do better.
But "general" case, no. we still "do" these things. They're just specialized.
So particular case, will everyone write code in imperative languages? No. But general-case, yes, people will still write programs.
"Siri, I've lost my wallet: ask Roomba to sweep the floor one time, exhaustively, and see if its stuck under a piece of furniture" is, at one remove "code"