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Ape Coding [fiction]

rsaksida.com

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Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#131

Post by rcxdude »

aqua_coder wrote: post #40
justinhj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I never use a calculator. Since my school days I have the skill to do long division. Why hit the sin button when I have the skill to write out a Taylor series expansion? For many other purposes I have the skill to use Newton Raphson methods to calculate values that mostly work. Those who use a calculator simply don't have these skills.

There is a notable difference between say, calculating long division through a calculator compared to prompting an AI to calculate the derivative of a simple continuous function. one requires _understanding_ of the function, while the other just skips the understanding and returns the required derivative. One is just a means to skip labor intensive and repetitive actions, while the other is meant to skip the entire p…

Integration and differentiation, even before LLMs, were already something that you would be better off just getting a machine to do in most cases. It's far more important to understand what the operations represent than it is to derive the exact closed form of the result yourself, because the actual process of doing it is almost always tedious and mechanical and doesn't give you much insight into the equation you are working with.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#132

Post by jjkaczor »

the__alchemist wrote: post #6

> “Autonomous Proxies for Execration, or APEs,” Pluto said. > “By typing in a few simple commands, I can spawn an arbitrary number of APEs in the cloud,” Pluto said. > “I have hand-tuned the inner loops to the point where a single APE can generate over a megaBraden of wide-spectrum defamation. The number would be much larger, of course, if I didn’t have to pursue a range of strategies to evade spam filters, CAPTCHAs,…

Bravo - slow-clap! (This book predicted many things about the current state of the world...)

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#133

Post by freetonik »

rmsaksida wrote: post #129
freetonik wrote: post #118

I call it Raw Coding, and am even trying to write a fiction book about it: https://leanpub.com/raw-coder

That looks great. I want to read it! The techno caste system reminds me of Lord of Light.

One of my favorite books, and definitely part of the inspiration.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#135

Post by pmg101 »

makapuf wrote: post #121
pmg101 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it is true to say that most people in the West now use a car for transport, and walking has become more of a leisure pursuit (rebranded as "hiking") rather than a practical necessity.

My car is typically used twice a week and (like many others) I mostly ride my bike or walk. I'm not special at all and I certainly use the car, but it has not replaced walking.

I don't think either of us disagree though that the number of miles of non-leisure journeys walked per capita is significantly less in 2026 than it was in 1926 or 1826 though?

I always found it pretty remarkable in David Copperfield when Dickens recounts regular walks between London and Canterbury, which he apparently did make in real life

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#136

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #33

I call it Tradcoding. Not using AI for anything. (You just copy-paste from StackOverflow, as our forefathers once did ;) I also have two levels "beneath" vibe coding: - Power Coding: Like power armor, you describe chunks of code in English and it's built. Here you outsource syntax and stdlib, but remain in control of architecture and data flow. - Backseat Coding: Like vibe coding but you keep peeking at the code and…

There's also the popular Tab Complete, which is roughly on the Power Coding level.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#137

Post by andai »

derefr wrote: post #111
andai wrote: post #33

I call it Tradcoding. Not using AI for anything. (You just copy-paste from StackOverflow, as our forefathers once did ;) I also have two levels "beneath" vibe coding: - Power Coding: Like power armor, you describe chunks of code in English and it's built. Here you outsource syntax and stdlib, but remain in control of architecture and data flow. - Backseat Coding: Like vibe coding but you keep peeking at the code and…

I dunno; I think Tradcoding would go beyond regular modern coding, and rather imply some kind of regressive Nara Smith "first grind and sift the flour in your kitchen"-style programming. No Internet connection, no cache of ecosystem packages, no digitized searchable reference docs; you sit in a room with a computer and a bookshelf of printed SDK manuals, and you make it work. I.e. the 1970s IBM mainframe coding exper…

I did something kinda like that when I realized I worked way better when I disconnected my internet. So I had to download documentation to use offline. Quite refreshing honestly.

Not necessarily more efficient, but it feels healthier and more rewarding.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#138

Post by hparadiz »

saulpw wrote: post #114
hparadiz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like someone in 1992 explaining to me why the internet will never be useful.

And you sound like someone in 1995 saying "everyone will have their own webpage!" which is kind of true but also note how many people actually make their own custom website. Even for people who do have their own "custom" website, they usually use WordPress or an existing static-site generator with a theme they found and tweaked a little.

Websites are manually put together things. I'm talking about something that runs automatically in the background and you don't even think about it. Our computers today are 10,000 times faster than what we had in 1990. Now extrapolate into the future. 100 years from now someone will be able generate a custom OS at today's level as a toy in minutes or less.

Re: Ape Coding [fiction]

#140

Post by skeledrew »

globular-toast wrote: post #127
skeledrew wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a far more concise and precise way of communicating than using natural languages. No. We have programming languages because reading and writing binary/hexadecimal is extremely painful to nigh on impossible for humans. And over the years we got better and better languages, from Assembly to C to Python, etc. Natural language was always the implicit ultimate goal of creating programming languages, and each step…

No, that is not true at all. Natural language is natural because it's good for communicating with fellow humans. We have ways to express needs, wants, feelings, doubts, ideas etc. It is not at all "natural" to program a computer with the same language because those computers were not part of the development of the language. Now, if we actually could develop a real natural language for programming that would be intere…

Natural languages are "natural" because they evolved as the de facto way for humans to communicate. Doesn't need to be with fellow humans, but humans were all we've been able to communicate with over our ~300,000 years of existence as a species. And we've done it in thousands of varieties.

> currently LLMs do not participate in natural language development

It's quite literally what LLMs are trained on. You create the core architecture, and then throw terabytes of human-generated text at it until a model that works with said text results. Doesn't matter if it participates in language development or not, it only matters that humans can communicate with it "naturally".

> Invented languages and codes

All languages are invented; the only difference is how conscious and deliberate the process was, which is a function of intended purpose. Just look at Esperanto. Or Valyrian.

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