LLMs as the new high level language
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LLMs as the new high level language
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Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#2After 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 as well. I'm very convinced non-technical people will be able to use these tools, because 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.
The irony is that I haven't seen AI have nearly as large of an impact anywhere else. We truly have automated ourselves out of work, people are just catching up with that fact and the people that just wanted to make money from software can now finally stop pretending that "passion" for "the craft" was every really part of their motivating calculus.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#3These 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 invalidation.
These models are blowing my mind. It's like I have an army of juniors I can actually trust.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#4"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."
This is not an appropriate analogy, at least not right now.
Code Agents are generating code from prompts, in that sense the metaphor is correct. However Agents then read the code and it becomes input and they generate more code. This was never the case for compilers, an LLM used in this sense is strictly not a compiler because it is not cyclic and not directional.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#5I would like to hijack the "high level language" term to mean dopamine hits from using an LLM.
"Generate a Frontend End for me now please so I don't need to think"
LLM starts outputting tokens
Dopamine hit to the brain as I get my reward without having to run npm and figure out what packages to use
Then out of a shadowy alleyway a man in a trenchcoat approaches
"Pssssttt, all the suckers are using that tool, come try some Opus 4.6"
"How much?"
"Oh that'll be $200.... and your muscle memory for running maven commands"
"Shut up and take my money"
----- 5 months later, washed up and disconnected from cloud LLMs ------
"Anyone got any spare tokens I could use?"
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#6No, prompts are not the new source code, vide https://quesma.com/blog/vibe-code-git-blame/.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#7[deleted]
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#8It'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.
Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#9It'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.
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Re: LLMs as the new high level language
#10I would like to hijack the "high level language" term to mean dopamine hits from using an LLM. "Generate a Frontend End for me now please so I don't need to think" LLM starts outputting tokens Dopamine hit to the brain as I get my reward without having to run npm and figure out what packages to use Then out of a shadowy alleyway a man in a trenchcoat approaches "Pssssttt, all the suckers are using that tool, come try…
> and your muscle memory for running maven commands
Here's $1000. Please do that. Don't bother with the LLM.