[gloosx]

+100 to that. My biggest scepticism is people actually creating a new problem while thinking they are solving problem. Don't get me wrong, translating natural language ideas into code is fun and all, the truth it is also code, yet in ambiguous language format given to the machine.

When did natural language became better for expressing development ideas than code? I know – when you don't know how to code in the first place. Then you will have to bet on all of the ambiguities of the language, cultural and meta-physical which words carry in order to hack your thing together instead of expressing yourself directly and explicitly.

Finally what is beautiful about strict code format we are so used to - it is truly the fastest and shortest path to get your thing done, in case you possess the knowledge needed.

[doug_durham]

Natural language isn't superior to computer languages. NL allows you to describe a software concept in a computer language and framework neutral way. The LLM generates the code. The real benefit is when you work across languages and frameworks. It is difficult to keep all of the details of all of the framework calls in your head all of the time.

[gloosx]

Where is the evidence for that? Any real-world application made and running by describing software concepts to an LLM?

It is what it is – a novel search engine, lossy and non-credible. Effectively useless on codebases that extend beyond its fairly limited context

[ericrallen]

That sounds a lot like gatekeeping.

These tools will empower folks who aren’t developers to build stuff and maybe learn a bit more about how programming works.

They will enable folks who have ideas, but can’t express them, to actually be able to create what they are imagining.

That’s awesome.

Code isn’t beautiful (except for a few rare exceptions). Creating something with code is.

[gloosx]

I agree it is a great tool for learning, but I don't believe anything more complex or of real use can be made AND maintained with it.

[ericrallen]

I think we’re probably way to early in the AI lifecycle to really form any strongly held beliefs yet.

In the 11 months since ChatGPT was released, things have come a long way. Who knows where we’ll be in another 11 months.

[gloosx]

What I'm trying to say is that the problem is not approachable this way at all – efficiently generating code by describing what you want, since when you compress what you want into a prompt you lose the details, and in order to restore all of them you will need a much bigger prompt volume than code generated. Because it is code itself which compresses an idea but no idea can compress the code well enough. In another 11 months it will be exactly in the same spot - it will not be able to be more efficient at this task by the nature of it.