351–360 of 486 posts
Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art. AI tends to accept conventional wisdom. Because of this, it struggles with genuine critical thinking and cannot independently advance the state of the art. AI…
It seems to be inevitable that with any new technology we go through a phase of super duper excitement about the possibilities, where we try to use it to the extreme, and through that process start to absorb what it actually is and isn't capable of. The hype cycle's distasteful of course, but I've accepted that this is how humans figure out what things are. Like a child we have to abuse it before we learn how to prop…
To assume progress stops here is silly.
I'm already growing tired of prognostications using the current status quo when the current status quo isn't even six months old.
Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art. AI tends to accept conventional wisdom. Because of this, it struggles with genuine critical thinking and cannot independently advance the state of the art. AI…
In theory, we are just one good innovation away from changing this. In reality, it's probably still some years away, but we are not in a situation where have to seriously speculate with this possibility.
> And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art.
But we only need a minority for innovations, progress and control. The bulk of IT is boring repetitive slop, lacking any innovation and just following patterns. The endgame will still result in probably 99% of humans being useless for the machinery. And this is not really new. In any industry, the majority of workers are just average, without any real influence on their industries progress, and just following conventional wisdom to make some bucks for surviving the next day.
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As long as agnosticism is the attitude, that’s fine. But we shouldn’t let mythology about human intelligence/computational capacity stop us from making progress toward that end. > unstated assumption that technological progress towards human-like intelligence is in principle possible. In reality, we do not know. For me this isn’t an assumption, it’s a corollary that follows from the Church-Turing thesis.
That certainly doesn’t follow from the Church-Turing thesis because the Church Turing thesis doesn’t demonstrate that human intelligence is computational. That it is still an unstated assumption.
I don’t know what non-computational intelligence would look like but I guess I’ll keep my mind open.
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> AI tends to accept conventional wisdom I wrote an article on that: Hard Things in Computer Science https://blog.est.im/2026/stderr-04 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46669591
Did you write it or did an LLM? I find some irony in seeing the telltale tropes of conventional LLM writing there
The original post in Chinese was handwritten
https://blog.est.im/2026/stderr-03
the English translation was compiled by gemini3.
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How come it works with humans? Give seasoned engineers a spec and they'll create a working product. Many software companies are created and guided on the verbal directions of people who don't code.
Because humans are fundamentally different from LLMs regardless of how much people draw the comparison.
I know of quite a lot of business people who kind of frolicking over the idea that the former behemoth got humbled so massively. From eating the world to unemployed in no time.
This delusion itself is telling and perpetuates the clinging to the sinking ship that is still the Elephant in the Room.
If something as complex or even complicated as app development including SDLCs etc. could simply be prompted now, then AI will eat anything less complicated alive.
So people better start considering the implications and ramifications of their statements. Otherwise we are all doomed and part of a darwinian system that will weed out the unnecessary parts of the system or we acknowledge the fact that a traditional profession such as app development is fundamentally changing.
This is something that happened before and constantly does. Otherwise we would not use DSL or Java.
But the fundamentals still work and therefore you need abstractions.
The people who hold funeral addresses over "coders" or developers tend to miss the point. If devs are disposable now, then the only question is: who is next? I know of quite a lot of business people who kind of frolicking over the idea that the former behemoth got humbled so massively. From eating the world to unemployed in no time. This delusion itself is telling and perpetuates the clinging to the sinking ship that…
Of course they are taking about that!!
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> Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art. I’ve recently taken a look at our codebase, written entirely by humans and found nothing innovative there, on the opposite, I see such brainrot that it makes…
Compilers are a hobby of mine, and I'd extend that to argue that the majority of compilers do not contain anything innovative either.