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by matheus-rr 137 days ago
The intermediate product argument is the strongest point in this thread. When we went from assembly to C, the debugging experience changed fundamentally. When we went from C to Java, how we thought about memory changed. With LLMs, I'm still debugging the same TypeScript and Python I was before.

The generation step changed. The maintenance step didn't. And most codebases spend 90% of their life in maintenance mode.

The real test of whether prompts become a "language" is whether they become versioned, reviewed artifacts that teams commit to repos. Right now they're closer to Slack messages than source files. Until prompt-to-binary is reliable enough that nobody reads the intermediate code, the analogy doesn't hold.
4 comments
andai 137 days ago
>With LLMs, I'm still debugging the same TypeScript and Python I was before.

Aren't you telling Claude/Codex to debug it for you?

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pjmlp 137 days ago
We went from Assembly to Fortran, with several languages in between, until C came to be almost 15 years later.
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surajrmal 137 days ago
Note that a lot of people also still work in C.
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BudapestMemora 137 days ago
"Until prompt-to-binary is reliable enough that nobody reads the intermediate code, the analogy doesn't hold."

1. OK, let's create 100 instances of prompt under the hood, 1-2 will hallucinate, 3-5 will produce something different from 90% of remaining, and it can compile based on 90% of answers

2. computer memory is also not 100% reliable , but we live with it somehow without man-in-the-middle manually check layer?

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whoisthemachine 137 days ago
Computer memory, even cheap consumer grade stuff, has much higher reliability than 90%. Otherwise your computer would be completely unusable!
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Lwerewolf 137 days ago
I wonder what ECC is for. So, unless you're Google and you're having to deal with "mercurial cores"...

Also, sorry, but what did I just actually attempt to read?

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zvitiate 137 days ago
Okay but if you aren’t using RAIM or a TMR system then is he really wrong?

And if you weren’t being snarky I’m sure you could understand. Generate 100 answers. Compare them. You’ll find ~90% the same. Choose that one.

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