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Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

nerd-lang.org

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Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#101

Post by skeledrew »

gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

Interesting. I've had a similar idea for some time, but originating from near opposite intent. I'd like to see LLMs generate natural language that can be executed by machine, but remains very readable by someone who's never learned a programming language.

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#102

Post by int_19h »

gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

I think the idea is solid, but the specifics are more involved than just making sure that it maps nicely to tokens.

One thing in particular that I've noticed is that many of language features that enable concise code - such as e.g. type inference - are counter-productive for LLMs because they are essentially implicit context, and LLMs much prefer such things to be explicit. I suspect that e.g. forcing the model to spell out the type of every non-trivial expression in full would have an effect similar to explicit chain-of-thought.

Similarly I think that the ability to write deeply recursive expressions is not necessarily a good thing, and an LLM-centric language should deliberately limit that and require explicit variables to bind intermediate results to.

The single biggest factor though seems to be the ability to ground the model through tooling. Static typing helps a lot there, as do explicit purity annotations for code, and so does automated testing, but one area that I would particularly like to explore for LLM use is design-by-contract.

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#103

Post by int_19h »

jjj123 wrote: post #52
throwaway150 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you can be so sure about that sentence being written by LLM. I can imagine it is perfectly possible that a human could've written that. I mean, on some day I might write a sentence just like that. I think HN should really ban complaints about LLM written text. It is annoying at best and a discouraging insinuation at worst. The insinuation is really offensive when the insinuation is false and the auth…

The funny thing is I’ve never seen an author of a post chime in and say “hey! I wrote this entirely myself” on an AI accusation. I either see sheepish admission with a “sorry, I’ll do better next time” or no response at all. Not saying the commenters never get it wrong, but I’ve seen them get it provably right a bunch of times.

Given how easily people throw around such accusations based solely on things like "it has an em dash", I think it's entirely reasonable to ignore them at this point.

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#104

Post by gnanagurusrgs »

gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

Update:

On New Year's Eve I announced NERD - a language built for LLMs, not for human authorship. The response was unexpectedly overwhelming. Questions, excitement, discussions, roasting - all of it.

But one question struck me: "What use case is this language built for?"

Fair. Instead of a general-purpose language covering all features - some of which may not even be relevant because we're not building apps the old way anymore - I picked one: agent-first.

What this means - you can now run an agent in NERD with one line of code:

-- Nerd code llm claude "What is Cloudflare Workers?"

No imports. No boilerplate. No framework.

The insight from working with agents and MCP: tools are absorbing integration complexity. Auth, retries, rate limiting - all moving into tool providers. What's left for agents? Orchestration.

And orchestration doesn't need much: → LLM calls → Tool calls → Control flow → That's it.

Every language today - Python, TypeScript, Java - was built for something else, then repurposed for agents. NERD starts from agents.

Fully story here: https://www.nerd-lang.org/agent-first

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#105

Post by gnanagurusrgs »

skeledrew wrote: post #101
gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

Interesting. I've had a similar idea for some time, but originating from near opposite intent. I'd like to see LLMs generate natural language that can be executed by machine, but remains very readable by someone who's never learned a programming language.

Yes, this opens up programming access to many :)

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#106

Post by gnanagurusrgs »

satisfice wrote: post #100
gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

If humans are supposed to be reviewing code why does reducing reviewability make any sense? Your big idea seems to be changing the tech so that developers have an excuse to be even less responsible than they already are.

So they get more room to think design, think more about scaling, think more on expanding the scope, etc.

Considering their experience, this saves them time to think beyond coding. :)

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#107

Post by gnanagurusrgs »

wmoxam wrote: post #23
gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ran a simple test with the examples you find in the project. Will publish those benchmarks.. actually that makes me think, I should probably do a public test suite showing the results. :)

Ok, now I'm even more confused. 40% of what code is machine written?

Check this out: https://www.nerd-lang.org/recipes

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#108

Post by gnanagurusrgs »

int_19h wrote: post #102
gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

I think the idea is solid, but the specifics are more involved than just making sure that it maps nicely to tokens. One thing in particular that I've noticed is that many of language features that enable concise code - such as e.g. type inference - are counter-productive for LLMs because they are essentially implicit context, and LLMs much prefer such things to be explicit. I suspect that e.g. forcing the model to sp…

Great thought process. Would love to have you contribute to the project.

For a start, now have llms.txt to aid models while developing nerd programs.

https://www.nerd-lang.org/llms.txt

Eg:

Write a function that adds two numbers and returns the result Use https://nerd-lang.org/llms.txt for syntax.

Re: Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans

#110

Post by pabs3 »

gnanagurusrgs wrote: post #2

Creator here. This started as a dumb question while using Claude Code: "Why is Claude writing TypeScript I'm supposed to read?" 40% of code is now machine-written. That number's only going up. So I spent some weekends asking: what would an intermediate language look like if we stopped pretending humans are the authors? NERD is the experiment. Bootstrap compiler works, compiles to native via LLVM. It's rough, probably…

Why not have the LLM write machine code (or assembly) directly?
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