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Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

codespeak.dev

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Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#111

Post by vbezhenar »

newsoftheday wrote: post #77
abreslav wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The limitation seems to be that you can't modify the code yourself if you want the spec to reflect it Eventually, we'll end up in a world where humans don't need to touch code, but we are not there yet. We are looking into ways to "catch up" the specs with whatever changes happen in the code not through CodeSpeak (agents or manual changes or whatever). It's an interesting exercise. In the case of agents, it's very…

> Eventually, we'll end up in a world where humans don't need to touch code, but we are not there yet. Will we though? Wouldn't AI need to reach a stage where it is a tool, like a compiler, which is 100% deterministic?

Compiler is not 100% deterministic. Its output can change when you upgrade its version, its output can change when you change optimization options. Using profile-guided optimization can also change between runs.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#112

Post by phplovesong »

This is pretty lame. I WANT to write code, something that has a formal definition and express my ideas in THAT, not some adhoc pseudo english an LLM then puts the cowboy hat on and does what the hotness of the week is.

Programming is in the end math, the model is defined and, when done correctly follows common laws.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#113

Post by seanmcdirmid »

I've done something similar for queries. Comments:

* Yes, this is a language, no its not a programming language you are used to, but a restricted/embellished natural language that (might) make things easier to express to an LLM, and provides a framework for humans who want to write specifications to get the AI to write code.

* Models aren't deterministic, but they are persistent (never gonna give up!). If you generate tests from your specification as well as code, you can use differential testing to get some measure (although not perfect) of correctness. Never delete the code that was generated before, if you change the spec, have your model fix the existing code rather than generate new code.

* Specifications can actually be analyzed by models to determine if they are fully grounded or not. An ungrounded specification is going to not be a good experience, so ask the model if it thinks your specification is grounded.

* Use something like a build system if you have many specs in your code repository and you need to keep them in sync. Spec changes -> update the tests and code (for example).

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#114

Post by devmor »

lich_king wrote: post #5

We built LLMs so that you can express your ideas in English and no longer need to code. Also, English is really too verbose and imprecise for coding, so we developed a programming language you can use instead. Now, this gives me a business idea: are you tired of using CodeSpeak? Just explain your idea to our product in English and we'll generate CodeSpeak for you.

That seems like it could lead to imprecise outcomes, so I've started a business that defines a spec to output the correct English to input to your product.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#115

Post by etothet »

Under "Prerequisites"[0] I see: "Get an Anthropic API key".

I presume this is temporary since the project is still in alpha, but I'm curious why this requires use of an API at all and what's special about it that it can't leverage injecting the prompt into a Claude Code or other LLM coding tool session.

[0]: https://codespeak.dev/blog/greenfield-project-tutorial-20260...

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#117

Post by [deleted] »

the_duke wrote: post #19

This doesn't make too much sense to me. * This isn't a language, it's some tooling to map specs to code and re-generate * Models aren't deterministic - every time you would try to re-apply you'd likely get different output (without feeding the current code into the re-apply and let it just recommend changes) * Models are evolving rapidly, this months flavour of Codex/Sonnet/etc would very likely generate different co…

[deleted]

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#118

Post by rco8786 »

the_duke wrote: post #19

This doesn't make too much sense to me. * This isn't a language, it's some tooling to map specs to code and re-generate * Models aren't deterministic - every time you would try to re-apply you'd likely get different output (without feeding the current code into the re-apply and let it just recommend changes) * Models are evolving rapidly, this months flavour of Codex/Sonnet/etc would very likely generate different co…

How is your 2 step process not susceptible to all the exact same pitfalls you listed above?

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#120

Post by haspok »

I would just like to point out the fun fact that instead of the brave new MD speak, there is still a `codespeak.json` to configure the build system itself...

...which seems to suggest that the authors themselves don't dogfood their own software. Please tell me that Codespeak was written entirely with Codespeak!

Instead of that json, which is so last year, why not use an agent to create an MD file to setup another agent, that will compile another MD file and feed it to the third agent, that... It is turtles, I mean agents, all the way down!

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