Earlier quoted context omitted.
But at what scope? The how will always matter. Your AI could design a system that bankrupts you on the first day. To prevent that you need to specify constraints and it's turtles all the way down. It would free you from spending time on areas you don't care about, but that's already true with SaaS.
The how that matters must be part of your spec, of course. It is turtles all the way down, but the point is that apart from the top turtle, all the other turtles will be AIs. That's a big difference. Just the step from "program" => "spec" is already a big one. So big, that it is rarely done today. Test-driven development is an attempt at this, but the problem is that tests cannot truly verify a spec. Proofs can. Of c…
GPT is all you need for the back end
221–230 of 278 posts
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
The how that matters must be part of your spec, of course. It is turtles all the way down, but the point is that apart from the top turtle, all the other turtles will be AIs. That's a big difference. Just the step from "program" => "spec" is already a big one. So big, that it is rarely done today. Test-driven development is an attempt at this, but the problem is that tests cannot truly verify a spec. Proofs can. Of c…
Is it: https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensi... ?
Hehehe. Well, the important ingredient missing from this comic strip is proof. You can see proof as code, if you like, but the important thing here is that you can trust the proof generated by an AI without having to look yourself at it.
Most people don't understand proof, but if you don't understand proof in 10 years, you will be out of a job as a programmer.
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#223We have already experimented with letting large neural networks develop software that seems to be correct based on a prompt. They are called developers. This is going to have all the same problems as letting a bunch of green developers go to town on implementation without a design phase. The point of designing systems is so that the complexity of the system is low enough that we can predict all of the behaviors, incl…
> This is going to have all the same problems as letting a bunch of green developers go to town on implementation without a design phase. Except without all the downsides, because GPT can rewrite the whole program nearly instantly. Do you see why our intuitions around maintenance, "good architecture/design" and good processes may now be meaningless? It seems a bit premature to say we don't have anything close when we…
Let's say I'm a bank, how do I know that my APIs don't allow the unintentional creation of money?
Presumably because the engineers designed the system to prevent that. They didn't build the system by looking at example API calls and constructing a system which satisfied the examples, but had random behavior elsewhere. They understood this property as an important invariant. More important than matching the timestamps to a particular ISO format.
I'm not talking about "good" design as "adapting to changing requirements" or adhering to "design principles" or whatever else people say makes a design good.
I'm talking about designing for simplicity so that the behavior of the system can be reliably predicted. This is an objective quality of the system. If you can predict the output, then the system has this quality. If you made it like that on purpose, then you designed it for this quality.
LLMs do not have this simplicity, but a software system you would trust to power a bank does.
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it: https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensi... ?
Hehehe. Well, the important ingredient missing from this comic strip is proof. You can see proof as code, if you like, but the important thing here is that you can trust the proof generated by an AI without having to look yourself at it. Most people don't understand proof, but if you don't understand proof in 10 years, you will be out of a job as a programmer.
> if you don't understand proof in 10 years, you will be out of a job as a programmer.
No, that's not gonna happen. Can you write a proof of an order for you go to go a fresh market to buy ingredient of a menu I want to cook? "Hey, go buy ingredients for my noodle menu whose result is my taste"
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#225I did something very similar, with React and Redux and ChatGPT standing in for the reducer: https://spindas.dreamwidth.org/4207.html Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34166193 It works surprisingly well!
"It works surprisingly well!"
This statement demands quantification and exposition.
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sorry to tell you, but AI is exceptional for engineering. Just make the AI also generate a proof that its code meets the spec. That's what human engineers should already do, but it was costly, because the tools were not good enough and the engineers not educated enough. AI is going to cut right through that Gordian knot. This should not be surprising: There is a large intersection between engineering and mathema…
Writing a spec thorough enough for AI to generate code that verifiably meets in and solves your problem means you're still programming, but specs instead of systems.
That was always the pitch of higher level programming. Pseudocode is slightly more of a spec than compilable C; C is slightly more of a spec than assembly language. It gets advertised as being "all you have to do is write a spec" and then it becomes just programming later.
Regardless, the studies have already demonstrated this: As you go higher-level, you write roughly the same amount of code and bugs per line, but also implement more features per line.
An AI tool will be ready for use when it demonstrates that same capability of "same bugs per line, more features per line".
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#227I did something very similar, with React and Redux and ChatGPT standing in for the reducer: https://spindas.dreamwidth.org/4207.html Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34166193 It works surprisingly well!
"It works surprisingly well!" This statement demands quantification and exposition.
We're drowning in GPT generated, trivial TODO applications? Mission successful?
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#228> You can iterate on your frontend without knowing exactly what the backend needs to look like.
Shameless plug: https://earlbarr.com/publications/prorogue.pdf
Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#229Re: GPT is all you need for the back end
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It works surprisingly well!" This statement demands quantification and exposition.
We're drowning in GPT generated, trivial TODO applications? Mission successful?
Sounds like tech influencers even before ChatGPT existed :)
I swear if I see one more TODO app...