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0 pointsaksosoakbab8mo ago0 comments

Spoken language is a miserable language to communicate in for programming. It’s one of the major detractors of LLMs.

Programming languages have a level of specification orders of magnitude greater than human communication ones.

0 comments

It absolutely is, but 99% of programs the average person wants to write for thier job are some variation of, sort these files, filter between value A and B, search inside for string xyz, change string to abc.

LLMs are good enough for that. Just like how spreadsheets are good enough for 99% of numerical office work.

jaza8mo ago

Computer scientists in the ~1970s said that procedural languages are a miserable medium for programming, compared to assembly languages.

And they said in the ~1960s that assembly languages are a miserable medium for programming, compared to machine languages.

(Ditto for every other language paradigm under the sun since then, particularly object-oriented languages and interpreted languages).

I agree that natural languages are a miserable medium for programming, compared to procedural / object-oriented / functional / declarative languages. But maybe I only agree because I'm a computer scientist from the ~2010s!

abagee8mo ago

I don't think that's the only difference - every "leap" in languages you mentioned was an increase in the level of abstraction, but no change in the fact that the medium was still deterministic.

Programming in natural languages breaks that mold by adding nondeterminism and multiple interpretations into the mix.

Not saying it will never happen - just saying that I don't think it's "only" because you're a computer scientist from the 2010s that you find natural languages to be a poor medium for programming.

hnfong8mo ago

> the medium was still deterministic

Well, you should participate more in the discussions on Undefined Behavior in C/C++....

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