Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

geoffreylitt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#21

Post by abecedarius »

sublinear wrote: post #5
chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

The same points you made make me wonder if end users even want to modify or write a program. Even if it's possible, it's still a lot of work. I just don't see that as the typical consumer behavior.

Imagine if practically all the writing you encountered was in printed books and magazines. Talk about "personal writing", how it might change things, how to get there, would get back puzzled looks and "Even if it's possible, it's still a lot of work. I just don't see that as the typical consumer behavior." It is a lot of work to produce a book.

Some relevant background: Bonnie Nardi, A Small Matter of Programming.

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#22

Post by maxlamb »

karma_pharmer wrote: post #15
chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

If you don't have clarity of thought, no intelligence in the world can help you. I disagree. Moronic people in positions of power are often in this situation. So far this has worked out well for the moronic powerful people: as long as they can convince intelligent people to work for them, they get to be moronic, powerful, and successful. This strategy has been working for them (as a group) for several millenia. I thi…

Maybe it's getting into semantics but clarity of thought does not necessarily mean accurate understanding of reality (which is usually messy and complex), so moronic people could ironically have more "clarity of thought" than non-moronic people because they tend to have simple beliefs (these X people are good, but those Y people are bad).

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#23

Post by sinuhe69 »

chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

I also see that communication and a clear understanding of what you want is always the biggest hurdle in software development, not the technical issues or understanding the underlying infrastructure. Most of the time, users realize only after a long struggle that what they want is impossible or in strong conflict with other requirements. Only a human expert with experience and knowledge can advise in such matters. No generative AI will be able to point this out, not even its next generation.

So the process of creating software with the help of AI for a consumer will result in a highly stressful process with many trials and errors. Without the ability to understand the generated code, and relying only on guesswork from both sides, I highly doubt that any consumer will ever want to undertake such ventures. Even for the sake of novelty and fun.

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#24

Post by igouy »

goatlover wrote: post #12

Wasn't this the initial promise of Smalltalk, to give end users the ability to easily modify and create their own software to fit their needs for personal computing?

`As with Simula leading to OOP, this encounter finally hit me with what the destiny of personal computing really was going to be. Not a personal dynamic vehicle, as in Engelbart's metaphor opposed to the IBM "railroads", but something much more profound: a personal dynamic medium. With a vehicle one could wait until high school and give "drivers ed", but if it was a medium, it had to extend into the world of childhood.`

"The Early History Of Smalltalk"

https://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/#p12

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#25

Post by jbeninger »

chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

I wish I could remember where I saw this quote - maybe a random comment on Slashdot back in its heyday? Paraphrasing:

"When we finally get a tool that will allow people to write code in plain English, it will be discovered that most people cannot speak plain English."

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#26

Post by JohnFen »

chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

Indeed. The issue is that of precision. I think it will never be possible to write nontrivial programs by describing them in anything like a conversational human language. I think this is true even if LLMs achieve some sort of godlike intelligence.

The problem is that human languages aren't intended to communicate that sort of precision. That's one of the largest reasons why very specialized technical professions (medicine, engineering, legal, etc.) heavily employ specialized jargon. It's necessary in order to make up for the deficiencies of natural human languages for these sorts of things.

In order to create a program, very high precision of descriptions are required. Programming languages can be viewed as a variety of such jargon. If you're doing it with (say) English, you'll always have to use it in a way that makes it no longer "conversational English".

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#27

Post by itishappy »

surfingdino wrote: post #9
sublinear wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same points you made make me wonder if end users even want to modify or write a program. Even if it's possible, it's still a lot of work. I just don't see that as the typical consumer behavior.

I have yet to meet a non-dev who wants to write or modify software themselves. Quite a few people still don't know that it's the software that makes appliances and devices do things and that it is written. They just don't know what software is so how would they know where to begin writing or modifying code?

You've never met a non-dev who complains about the UX of Outlook, wants to adjust the contents of their Twitter/Facebook feed, or wishes to tweak the styles of their blog?

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#28

Post by Terr_ »

karma_pharmer wrote: post #15
chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

If you don't have clarity of thought, no intelligence in the world can help you. I disagree. Moronic people in positions of power are often in this situation. So far this has worked out well for the moronic powerful people: as long as they can convince intelligent people to work for them, they get to be moronic, powerful, and successful. This strategy has been working for them (as a group) for several millenia. I thi…

That sounds less like helping the person overcome their problem and more like secretly demoting them into a figurehead while the devious Grand Vizier actually steers things.

I don't want my tools to work that way. Especially since the not-so-assistant may be making decisions to favor its parent-corporation.

> Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.”

-- Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#29

Post by flawsofar »

JohnFen wrote: post #26
chiasson wrote: post #2

> Until now, that vision has been bottlenecked on turning fuzzy informal intent into formal, executable code Software has been and always will be fundamentally a problem of communication. What many don't realize is that the true challenge of communication is not one of transmission, but clarity of thought and understanding. Any tool, software language, or AI coder will still be limited by the clarity and completeness…

Indeed. The issue is that of precision. I think it will never be possible to write nontrivial programs by describing them in anything like a conversational human language. I think this is true even if LLMs achieve some sort of godlike intelligence. The problem is that human languages aren't intended to communicate that sort of precision. That's one of the largest reasons why very specialized technical professions (me…

I think LLMs are already influencing the development of somethin between natural language and a formal language.

Prompt engineering and getting structured data in and out of an LLM naturally lead you to something like precise English with JSON and pseudocode syntax sprinkled in

Re: Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs (2023)

#30

Post by XenophileJKO »

flawsofar wrote: post #29
JohnFen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The issue is that of precision. I think it will never be possible to write nontrivial programs by describing them in anything like a conversational human language. I think this is true even if LLMs achieve some sort of godlike intelligence. The problem is that human languages aren't intended to communicate that sort of precision. That's one of the largest reasons why very specialized technical professions (me…

I think LLMs are already influencing the development of somethin between natural language and a formal language. Prompt engineering and getting structured data in and out of an LLM naturally lead you to something like precise English with JSON and pseudocode syntax sprinkled in

Tell me about it... I work on prompting a lot and you would be surprised how different the model interprets things like "suggestion" vs "recommendation".
Post reply on HN