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Automatic Programming

antirez.com

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Re: Automatic Programming

#121

Post by kris_builds »

There's a hidden assumption in the waterfall vs agile debate that AI might actually dissolve: the cost of iteration.

Waterfall made sense when changing code was expensive. Agile made sense when you couldn't know requirements upfront. But what if generating code becomes nearly free?

I've been experimenting with treating specs as the actual product - write the spec, let AI generate multiple implementations, throw them away daily. The spec becomes the persistent artifact that evolves, while code is ephemeral.

The surprising part: when iteration is cheap, you naturally converge on better specs. You're not afraid to be wrong because being wrong costs 20 minutes, not 2 sprints.

Anyone else finding that AI is making them more willing to plan deeply precisely because execution is so cheap that plans can be validated quickly?

Re: Automatic Programming

#122

Post by FeteCommuniste »

Thanemate wrote: post #103
sneak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prompting the AI is indeed “do[ing] it yourself”. There’s nobody else here, and this code is original and never existed before, and would not exist here and now if I hadn’t prompted this machine.

Sure. But the sentence "I am a programmer" doesn't fit with prompting, just as much as me prompting for a drawing that resembles something doesn't make me a painter.

Exactly. He's acting as something closer to a technical manager (who can dip into the code if need be but mostly doesn't) than a programmer.

Re: Automatic Programming

#123

Post by zahlman »

jll29 wrote: post #98
jakkos wrote: post #18

> Pre-training is, actually, our collective gift I feel like this wording isn't great when there are many impactful open source programmers who have explicitly stated that they don't want their code used to train these models and licensed their work in a world where LLMs didn't exist. It wasn't their "gift", it was unwillingly taken from them. > I'm a programmer, and I use automatic programming. The code I generate i…

> there are many impactful open source programmers who have explicitly stated that they don't want their code used to train these models and licensed their work in a world where LLMs didn't exist. It wasn't their "gift", it was unwillingly taken from them. There are subtle legal differences between "free open source" licensing and putting things in the public domain. If you use an open source license, you could forbi…

> If you use an open source license, you could forbid LLM training

Established OSS licenses are all from before anyone imagined that LLMs would come into existence, let alone train on and then generate code. Discrimination on purpose is counter to OSI principles (https://opensource.org/osd):

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

The GPL argument you describe hinges on making the legal case that LLMs produce "derived works". When the output can't be clearly traced to source input (even the system itself doesn't know how) it becomes rather difficult to argue that in court.

Re: Automatic Programming

#125

Post by singpolyma3 »

jll29 wrote: post #98
jakkos wrote: post #18

> Pre-training is, actually, our collective gift I feel like this wording isn't great when there are many impactful open source programmers who have explicitly stated that they don't want their code used to train these models and licensed their work in a world where LLMs didn't exist. It wasn't their "gift", it was unwillingly taken from them. > I'm a programmer, and I use automatic programming. The code I generate i…

> there are many impactful open source programmers who have explicitly stated that they don't want their code used to train these models and licensed their work in a world where LLMs didn't exist. It wasn't their "gift", it was unwillingly taken from them. There are subtle legal differences between "free open source" licensing and putting things in the public domain. If you use an open source license, you could forbi…

You pre suppose that output is derive work (not a given) and that training is not fair use (also not a given).

If the courts decide to apply the law as you assume the AI companies are all dead. But they are all betting that's not going to be the case. And since so much of the industry is taking the bet with them... The courts will take that into account

Re: Automatic Programming

#126

Post by sibellavia »

> That said, if vibe coding is the process of producing software without much understanding of what is going on [...], automatic programming is the process of producing software that attempts to be high quality and strictly following the producer's vision of the software [...], with the help of AI assistance.

He is absolutely right here, and I think in this article he has "shaped" the direction of future software engineering (which is already happening actually): we are moving closer and closer to a new way of writing code. But this time, for real. I mean that it will increasingly become the standard. Just as in the past an architect used to draw every detail by hand, while today much of the operational work is delegated to parametric software, CAD, BIM, and so on. The architect does not "draw less" because they know less, but because the value of their work has shifted. This is a concept we've repeated often in recent months, with the advent of Opus 4.5 and 5.2-Codex. But I think that here antirez has given it the right shape and also did well to distinguish it from mere vibecoding, which, as far as I'm concerned, are two radically different approaches.

Re: Automatic Programming

#127

Post by zahlman »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #114
OJFord wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand how that isn't allowed/disallowed simply on the basis of whether the licence permits use without attribution?

The hard truth is that if you're big enough (and the original creator is small enough) you can just do whatever you want and to hell with what any license says about it.

To my understanding, the expensive lawyers hired by the biggest people around, filtered through layers of bureaucracy and translated to software teams, still result in companies mostly avoiding GPL code.

Re: Automatic Programming

#128

Post by zahlman »

rtpg wrote: post #16

Every time I hear someone mention they vibed a thing or claude gave them something, it just reads as a sort of admission that I'm about to read some _very_ "first draft"-feeling code. I get this even from people who spend a lot of time talking about needing to own code you send up. People need to stop apologizing for their work product because of the tools they use. Just make the work product better and you don't hav…

The problem is that it's become feasible to get further in a design without caring about architecture or code quality.

Re: Automatic Programming

#130

Post by heavyset_go »

sneak wrote: post #87
catdog wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it's not only the work of "the model" it's the work of human beings the model is trained on, often illegally.

Copyright infringement is a tort. “Illegal” is almost always used to refer to breaking of criminal law. This seems like intentionally conflating them to imply that appropriating code for model training is a criminal offense, when, even in the most anti-AI, pro-IP view, it is plainly not.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
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