271–280 of 396 posts
What did Javascript/Python do to Java? They are not interchangeable nor comparable. I don't think Federico's opinion is worth reading further.
>Following this hypothesis, what C did to assembler, what Java did to C, what Javascript/Python/Perl did to Java, now LLM agents are doing to all programming languages. What did Javascript/Python do to Java? They are not interchangeable nor comparable. I don't think Federico's opinion is worth reading further.
Are 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.
After working with the latest models I think these "it's just another tool" or "another layer of abstraction" or "I'm just building at a different level" kind of arguments are wishful thinking. You're not going to be a designer writing blueprints for a series of workers to execute on, you're barely going to be a product manager translating business requirements into a technical specification before AI closes that gap…
> The irony is that I haven't seen AI have nearly as large of an impact anywhere else. We are in this pickle because programmers are good at making tools that help programmers. Programming is the tip of the spear, as far as AI's impact goes, but there's more to come. Why pay an expensive architect to design your new office building, when AI will do it for peanuts? Why pay an expensive lawyer to review your contract?…
All of those jobs are mandated by law to done by accredited and liable humans.
Are 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?
There’s barely any debate, people don’t answer each other; It’s rather about invoking the wonder and imagination of everyone’s brain. Like spatial conquest or an economic crisis: It will change everything but you can’t do anything immediately about it, and everyone tries to understand what it will change so they can adapt. It’s more akin to 24hrs junk news cycle, where everything is presented as an alert but your tem…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
English can be ambiguous. Programming languages like C or Java cannot
English CAN be ambiguous, but it doesn't have to be. Think about it. Human beings are able to work out ambiguity when it arrises between people with enough time and dedication, and how do they do it? They use English (or another equivalent human language). With enough back and forth, clarifying questions, or enough specificity in the words you choose, you can resolve any ambiguity. Or, think about it this way. In ord…
This is an exaggeration, if you store the prompt that was "compiled" by today's LLMs there is no guarantee that in 4 months from now you will be able to replicate the same result. I can take some C or Fortran code from 10 years ago, build it and get identical results.
That is a wobbly assertion. You certainly would need to run the same compiler, forgo any recent optimisations, architecture updates and the likes if your code has numerical sensitive parts. You certainly can get identical results, but it's equally certainly not going to be that simple a path frequently.
But at least I know that if I need to, I can do it. With an LLM, if you don't store the original weights, all bets are off. Reproducibility of results can be a hard requirement in certain cases or industries.
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. 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…
Greedy decoding gives you that guarantee (determinism). But I think you'll find it to be unhelpful. The output will still be wrong the same % of the time (slightly more, in fact) in equally inexplicable ways. What you don't like is the black box unverifiable aspect, which is independent of determinism.
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They're also very good at demoralizing people who actually code for a living. Or at least the hype surrounding them is. Up until a couple years ago I'd simply dive into a new coding assignment and be excited to solve all the problems. Some new widget? Maybe I could find a way to make the UX flow better, or add a couple neat little transitions, or heck even improve the mechanics or the business logic. I now find mysel…
This happened to painters and illustrators a few years earlier than programmers. People used to think detailed drawing and realistic painting were kinds of unachievable wizardry. Now they go on ChatGPT or Midjourney and press a button. Professionals despair at the slop results, but they’re good enough for most people. I try to think of this positively as a transition similar to the invention of photography. The bourg…
Anyone who would actually pay for a portrait would not hang Midjourney or ChatGPT output on their walls.