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LLMs as the new high level language

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Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#31

Post by cocoto »

hackyhacky wrote: post #26
dsr_ wrote: post #8

It's not a programming language if you can't read someone else's code, figure out what it does, figure out what they meant, and debug the difference between those things. "I prompted it like this" "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" It's not programming. It might be having a pseudo-conversation with a complex system, but it's not programming.

> "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" I wrote a program in C and and gave it to gcc. Then I gave the same program to clang and I got a different result. I guess C code isn't programming.

If there is no error on the compiler implementation and no undefined behavior the resulting program is equivalent and the few differences are mostly just implementation defined stuff which are left to the compiler to decide (but often gcc and clang do the same). The performance might differ also. It’s clearly not comparable to the many differences you can get from LLM’s output.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#32

Post by [deleted] »

asa400 wrote: post #19
toprerules wrote: post #2

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…

If all you (not you specifically, more of a royal “you” or “we”) are is a collection of skills centered around putting code into an editor and opening pull requests as fast as possible, then sure, you might be cooked. But if your job depends on taste, design, intuition, sociability, judgement, coaching, inspiring, explaining, or empathy in the context of using technology to solve human problems, you’ll be fine. The p…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#33

Post by hackyhacky »

Calavar wrote: post #21
echelon wrote: post #3

These models are nothing short of astounding. I can write a spec for an entirely new endpoint, and Claude figures out all of the middleware plumbing and the database queries. (The catch: this is in Rust and the SQL is raw, without an ORM. It just gets it. I'm reviewing the code, too, and it's mostly excellent.) I can ask Claude to add new data to the return payloads - it does it, and it can figure out the cache inval…

I'm not sure I'd call agents an army of juniors. More like a high school summer intern who has infinite time to do deep dives into StackOverflow but doesn't have nearly enough programming experience yet to have developed a "taste" for good code In my experience, agentic LLMs tend to write code that is very branchy with cyclomatic complexity. They don't follow DRY principles unless you push them very hard in that dire…

> In my experience, agentic LLMs tend to write code that is very branchy with cyclomatic complexity

You are missing the forest for the trees. Sure, we can find flaws in the current generation of LLMs. But they'll be fixed. We have a tool that can learn to do anything as well as a human, given sufficient input.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#34

Post by mjr00 »

toprerules wrote: post #17
shahbaby wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I'm seeing is that all of the skills that my training and years of experience have helped me hone are now implemented by these tools to the level that I know most businesses would be satisfied by. So when things break or they have to make changes, and the AI gets lost down a rabbit hole, who is held accountable?

The answer is the AI. It's already handling complex issues and debugging solely by gathering its own context, doing major refactors successfully, and doing feature design work. The people that will be held responsible will be the product owners, but it won't be for bugs, it will be for business impact. My point is that SWEs are living on a prayer that AI will be perched on a knifes edge where there is still be some a…

And what happens when the AI can't figure it out?

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#35

Post by svieira »

hackyhacky wrote: post #26
dsr_ wrote: post #8

It's not a programming language if you can't read someone else's code, figure out what it does, figure out what they meant, and debug the difference between those things. "I prompted it like this" "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" It's not programming. It might be having a pseudo-conversation with a complex system, but it's not programming.

> "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" I wrote a program in C and and gave it to gcc. Then I gave the same program to clang and I got a different result. I guess C code isn't programming.

Note that the prompt wasn't fed to another LLM, but to the same one. "I wrote a program in C and gave it to GCC. Then I gave the same program to GCC again and I got a different result" would be more like it.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#36

Post by hackyhacky »

cocoto wrote: post #31
hackyhacky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" I wrote a program in C and and gave it to gcc. Then I gave the same program to clang and I got a different result. I guess C code isn't programming.

If there is no error on the compiler implementation and no undefined behavior the resulting program is equivalent and the few differences are mostly just implementation defined stuff which are left to the compiler to decide (but often gcc and clang do the same). The performance might differ also. It’s clearly not comparable to the many differences you can get from LLM’s output.

It just depends what level of abstraction you're willing to pretend doesn't matter.

gcc and clang produce different assembly code, but it "does the same thing," for certain definitions of "same" and "thing."

Claude and Gemini produce different Rust code, but it "does the same thing," for certain definitions of "same" and "thing."

The issue is that the ultimate beneficiary of AI is the business owner. He's not a programmer, and he has a much looser definition of "same."

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#37

Post by hackyhacky »

svieira wrote: post #35
hackyhacky wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" I wrote a program in C and and gave it to gcc. Then I gave the same program to clang and I got a different result. I guess C code isn't programming.

Note that the prompt wasn't fed to another LLM , but to the same one. "I wrote a program in C and gave it to GCC. Then I gave the same program to GCC again and I got a different result" would be more like it.

> Then I gave the same program to GCC again and I got a different result" would be more like it.

This is a completely realistic scenario, given variance between compiler output based on optimization level, target architecture, and version.

Sure, LLMs are non-deterministic, but that doesn't matter if you never look at the code.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#38

Post by isodev »

orbital-decay wrote: post #28
dsr_ wrote: post #8

It's not a programming language if you can't read someone else's code, figure out what it does, figure out what they meant, and debug the difference between those things. "I prompted it like this" "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" It's not programming. It might be having a pseudo-conversation with a complex system, but it's not programming.

>"I prompted it like this" >"I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" 1:1 reproducibility is much easier in LLMs than in software building pipelines. It's just not guaranteed by major providers because it makes batching less efficient.

> 1:1 reproducibility is much easier in LLMs than in software building pipelines

What’s a ‘software building pipeline’ in your view here? I can’t think of parts of the usual SDLC that are less reproducible than LLMs, could you elaborate?

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#39

Post by ebb_earl_co »

hackyhacky wrote: post #36
cocoto wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is no error on the compiler implementation and no undefined behavior the resulting program is equivalent and the few differences are mostly just implementation defined stuff which are left to the compiler to decide (but often gcc and clang do the same). The performance might differ also. It’s clearly not comparable to the many differences you can get from LLM’s output.

It just depends what level of abstraction you're willing to pretend doesn't matter. gcc and clang produce different assembly code, but it "does the same thing," for certain definitions of "same" and "thing." Claude and Gemini produce different Rust code, but it "does the same thing," for certain definitions of "same" and "thing." The issue is that the ultimate beneficiary of AI is the business owner. He's not a progr…

No, the ultimate beneficiary of LLM-created code is the toll collectors who stole as much intellectual property as they could (and continue to do so), fleecing everyone else that they are Promethean for having done so and for continuing to do so.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#40

Post by measurablefunc »

hackyhacky wrote: post #26
dsr_ wrote: post #8

It's not a programming language if you can't read someone else's code, figure out what it does, figure out what they meant, and debug the difference between those things. "I prompted it like this" "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" It's not programming. It might be having a pseudo-conversation with a complex system, but it's not programming.

> "I gave it the same prompt, and it came out different" I wrote a program in C and and gave it to gcc. Then I gave the same program to clang and I got a different result. I guess C code isn't programming.

The output will conform to the standard & it will be semantically equivalent. You're making several category errors w/ your comparison.
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