There's a reason we distinguish between programmers and managers; if "LLMs are just the new high level language", then a manager is just another programmer operating on a level above code. I mean, sure, we can say that, but words become kind of meaningless at this point.
LLMs as the new high level language
251–260 of 396 posts
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#252If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time. A traditional compiler will produce a program that behaves the same way, given the same source and options. Some even go out of their way to guarantee they produce the same binary output, which is a good thing for security and package management. That is why we don't need to store the…
> If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time.
Give a spec to a designer or developer. Do you get the same result every time?
I’m going to guess no. The results can vary wildly depending on the person.
The code generated by LLMs will still be deterministic. What is different is the product team tools to create that product.
At a high level, does using LLMs to do all or most of the coding ultimately help the business?
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use them everywhere since the late 1990's, it is called managed runtime.
That is a completely different category. I've never experienced a logic error due to a managed runtime and only once or twice ever due to a C++ compiler.
I certainly already experienced crashes due to JIT miscompilations, even though it was a while back, on Websphere with IBM Java implementation.
Also it is almost impossible to guarantee two runs of an application will trigger the same machine code output, unless the JIT is either very dumb on its heuristics and PGO analysis, or one got lucky enough to reproduce the same computation environment.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone doing benchmarks with managed runtimes, or serverless, knows it isn't quite true. Which is exactly one of the AOT only, no GC, crowds use as example why theirs is better.
Reproducible builds exist. AOT/JIT and GC are just not very relevant to this issue, not sure why you brought them up.
Because they are dynamic compilers!
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#255If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time. A traditional compiler will produce a program that behaves the same way, given the same source and options. Some even go out of their way to guarantee they produce the same binary output, which is a good thing for security and package management. That is why we don't need to store the…
> If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time. Give a spec to a designer or developer. Do you get the same result every time? I’m going to guess no. The results can vary wildly depending on the person. The code generated by LLMs will still be deterministic. What is different is the product team tools to create that product. At a…
This comparison holds up to me only in the long standing debate "LLMs as the new engineer", not "LLMs as a new programming language" (like here).
I think there are important distinctions there, predictably one of them.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone doing benchmarks with managed runtimes, or serverless, knows it isn't quite true. Which is exactly one of the AOT only, no GC, crowds use as example why theirs is better.
Even those are way more predictable than LLMs, given the same input. But more importantly, LLMs aren’t stateless across executions, which is a huge no-no.
Are you certain to predict the JIT generated machine code given the JVM bytecode?
Without taking anything else into account that the JIT uses on its decision tree?
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#257If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time. A traditional compiler will produce a program that behaves the same way, given the same source and options. Some even go out of their way to guarantee they produce the same binary output, which is a good thing for security and package management. That is why we don't need to store the…
> If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time. Give a spec to a designer or developer. Do you get the same result every time? I’m going to guess no. The results can vary wildly depending on the person. The code generated by LLMs will still be deterministic. What is different is the product team tools to create that product. At a…
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Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#258Are these kinds of articles a new breed of rage bait? They keep ending up on the front page with thriving comment sections, but in terms of content they're pretty low in nutritional value. So I'm guessing they just rise because they spark a debate?
I complained about the same thing, but apparently people take the bait.
Which is why I only quickly scan through the comments to see if there are new insights I haven't seen in the past few months. Surprise, almost never.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#259Are these kinds of articles a new breed of rage bait? They keep ending up on the front page with thriving comment sections, but in terms of content they're pretty low in nutritional value. So I'm guessing they just rise because they spark a debate?
This comment has even lower nutritional value. It's just a "dislike" with more words. You could have offered your counterarguments or if you're too tired of it but still feel you need to be heard, you could have linked to a previous comment or post of yours.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#260Are these kinds of articles a new breed of rage bait? They keep ending up on the front page with thriving comment sections, but in terms of content they're pretty low in nutritional value. So I'm guessing they just rise because they spark a debate?
I once read here on HN that a good metric for filtering controversial comment sections is number of upvotes/comments. If it's bellow one, the thread is probably controversial.