[zahlman]

>This statement assumes years of grueling training to become bilingual in a foreign programming language

...So, less experienced programmers are supposed to be happy that they can save time with the same technology that will convince their employers that a human isn't necessary for the position?

(And, frankly, I've overall quite enjoyed the many years I've put into the craft.)

[geor9e]

You're seeing this entirely from the perspective of people who do programming as their job. I'm seeing it from the perspective of the other 99% of society. It feels really good that they're no longer gatekept by the rigid and cryptic interfaces that prevented them from really communicating with their computer, just because it couldn't speak their native tongue.

[wrs]

The point of the PB&J thing is exactly to demonstrate that your native tongue isn’t precise enough to program a computer with. There’s a reason those interfaces are rigid, and it’s not “gatekeeping”. (The cryptic part is just to increase information density — see COBOL for an alternative.)

[geor9e]

I think https://docs.cursor.com/chat/agent has shown plain English is precise enough to program a computer with, and some well respected programmers have become fans of it https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

I only took exception to the original statement - that coding is trivial, and the questioning if AI is even useful. So many people are finally able to create things they were never able to. That's something to celebrate. Coding isn't trivial to most people, it's more of an insurmountable barrier to entry. English works - that's why a clear-minded project manager can delegate programming to someone fluent in it, without knowing how to code themselves. We don't end up with them dumping a jar of jam on the floor, because intelligent beings can communicate in the context of a lot of prior knowledge they were trained on. That's how AI is overcoming the peanut butter and jelly problem of English. It doesn't need solutions defined for it, a word to the wise is sufficient.

[namaria]

> intelligent beings can communicate in the context of a lot of prior knowledge

This is key. It works because of previous work. People have shared context because they develop it over time, when we are raised - shared context is passed on the the new generation and it grows.

LLMs consume the context recorded in the training data, but they don't give it back. They diminish it because people don't need to learn the shared context when using this tools. It appears to work in some use cases, but it will degrade our collective shared context over time as people engage with and use these tools that consume past shared context and at the same time atrophy our ability to maintain and increase the shared context. Because the shared context is reproduced and grows when it is learned by people. If a tool just takes it and precludes people learning it, there is a delayed effect where over time there will be less shared context and when the performance of the tool degrades the ability to maintain and extend the shared context will also have degraded. We might get to an irrecoverable state and spiral.

[otabdeveloper4]

> plain English is precise enough to program a computer with

Only if your problem is already uploaded on Github.

[Arn_Thor]

Yep! I’m digitally literate but can’t do anything more advanced than “hello world”. Never had the time or really interest in learning programming.

In the last year I’ve built scripts and even full fledged apps with GUIs to solve a number of problems and automate a bunch of routine tasks at work and in my hobbies. It feels like I woke up with a superpower.

And I’ve learned a ton too, about how the plumbing works, but I still can’t write code on my own. That makes me useful but dependent on the AI.