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LLMs as the new high level language

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Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#301

Post by bonoboTP »

abcde666777 wrote: post #298
bonoboTP wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I didn't articulate it but behind my comment was a question - who's actually upvoting this stuff and why? To me the claim of the article was silly on the surface of it, silly enough that I was surprised that folks consider it worthy of discussion. Is there just a large number of upvoters here without even a basic understanding of the topic at hand? Or is there some other explanation beyond that?

Hacker news is a bit different from Reddit or other social media. This is a good summary, especially the section titled "Comments". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: I notice I'm talking to a 2 week old account, I should've checked before engaging.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#302

Post by amelius »

layer8 wrote: post #291
etrvic wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither, that's up to your individual preference. Although I think that controversial threads have more noise, but sometimes provide a more enjoyable read.

So what use is it to filter them? It seems you still have to judge their worth based on their actual contents.

Consider there are 100 upvotes and 100 downvotes. Net votes: 0. The submission would end up with a lower ranking that you wanted it to have.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#303

Post by orbital-decay »

sarchertech wrote: post #267
orbital-decay wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s not just about non-determinism I'm very specifically addressing prompt reproducibility mentioned above, because it's a notorious red herring in these discussions. What you want is correctness, not determinism/reproducibility which is relatively trivial. (although thinking of it more, maybe not that trivial... if you want usable repro in the long run, you'll have to store the model snapshot, the inference code,…

Well if you want to use it as a high level language where you check in the spec and regenerate the code then prompt instability/chaotic output makes that infeasible. You can’t just tell users “sorry there are a million tiny differences all over the app every time we change the slightest thing, that’s just the ambiguous nature of reality”.

>where you check in the spec and regenerate the code then prompt instability/chaotic output makes that infeasible

What, why would you want to write the code anew? Identify the changes in the spec and bring the existing code in line with them.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#304

Post by etrvic »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #293
layer8 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what use is it to filter them? It seems you still have to judge their worth based on their actual contents.

The front page has an algorithm that is "less noise, more news" but if you go to the /active page, you get more conversation-driven submissions. I tend to load both up and refresh every few hours.

> The FAQ notes that submission rank is impacted by "software which downweights overheated discussions." A good rule of thumb for this effect is when the number of comments on a submission exceeds its score. Moderators can overrule the downranking for appropriate, not-actually-a-flame-war discussions.

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#305

Post by dgb23 »

nly wrote: post #27

I have a source file of a few hundred lines implementing an algorithm that no LLM I've tried (and I've tried them all) is able to replicate, or even suggest, when prompted with the problem. Even with many follow up prompts and hints. The implementations that come out are buggy or just plain broken The problem is a relatively simple one, and the algorithm uses a few clever tricks. The implementation is subtle...but no…

> but when it comes to the hard stuff they still suck.

Also much of the really annoying, time consuming stuff, like frontend code. Writing UIs is not rocket science, but hard in a bad way and LLMs are not helping much there.

Plus, while they are _very_ good at finding common issues and gotchas quickly that are documented online (say you use some kind of library that you're not familiar with in a slightly wrong way, or you have a version conflict that causes an issue), they are near useless when debugging slightly deeper issues and just waste a ton of time.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#306

Post by Akef »

Paradigm shift ahead, folks. What I observe in the comments—often more compelling than the article itself—is the natural tension within the scientific community surrounding the 'scientific method,' a debate that's been playing out for... what, a year now? Maybe less? True, this isn't perfect, nor does it come with functionality guarantees. Talking about 10x productivity? That's relative—it hinges on the tool, the cultural background of the 'orchestra conductor,' or the specific, hands-on knowledge accumulated by the conductor, their team, organization, and even the target industry.

In essence: we're witnessing a paradigm shift. And for moments like these—I invite you—it's invaluable to have studied Popper and Kuhn in those courses.

An even more provocative hypothesis: the 'Vienna Circle' has morphed into the 'Circle of Big Tech,' gatekeepers of the data. What's the role of academia here? What happened to professional researchers? The way we learn has been hijacked by these brilliant companies, which—at least this time—have a clear horizon: maximizing profits. What clear horizon did the stewards of the scientific method have before? Wasn't it tainted by the enunciator's position? The personal trajectory of the scientist, the institution (university) funding them? Ideology, politics?

This time, it seems, we know exactly where we're headed.

(This comment was translated from Spanish, please excuse the rough edges)

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#307

Post by trklausss »

energy123 wrote: post #248
heikkilevanto wrote: post #226

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.

The question is: if we keep the same context and model, and the same LLM configuration (quantization etc.), does it provide the same output at same prompt?

If the answer is no, then we cannot be sure to use it as a high-level language. The whole purpose of a language is providing useful, concise constructs to avoid something not being specified (undefined behavior).

If we can't guarantee that the behavior of the language is going to be the same, it is no better than prompting someone some requirements and not checking what they are doing until the date of delivery.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#308

Post by voxleone »

One thing I think the “LLM as new high-level language” framing misses is the role of structure and discipline. LLMs are great at filling in patterns, but they struggle with ambiguity, the exact thing we tolerate in human languages.

A practical way to get better results is to stop prompting with prose and start providing explicit models of what we want. In that sense, UML-like notations can act as a bridge between human intent and machine output. Instead of:

“Write a function to do X…”

we give:

“Here’s a class diagram + state machine; generate safe C/C++/Rust code that implements it.”

UML is already a formal, standardized DSL for software structure. LLMs have no trouble consuming textual forms (PlantUML, Mermaid, etc.) and generating disciplined code from them. The value isn’t diagrams for humans but constraining the model’s degrees of freedom.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#310

Post by gloosx »

A novice prefers declarative control, an expert prefers procedural control

Beginner programmers want: "make this feature"

Experienced devs want: control over memory, data flow, timing, failure modes

That is why abstractions feel magical at first and suffocating later which sparks this whole debate.

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