[msla]

Eh, programmers used to be people who'd desk-check their flow charts before hand-translating them into machine code to enter into a front panel. There's been decades of growth in abstraction since then, and LLMs are just one more layer, another return of the perennial idea of "programming" by writing specifications in a natural language that a machine can automatically translate into actual code which it can run. You know, like what COBOL allows. We're still going to need people who are capable of making such specifications, ensuring the resulting code is correct, and fixing them when they're no longer sufficient.

[framel]

Humanity previously experimented, many centuries, with writing math in natural language and failed; it is fundamentally unsuited for the task. Furthermore, natural language specifications are, at best, wishful thinking. Feed this into a stochastic parrot, and you have a recipe for disaster. Repeating these mistakes proves coding is still a pseudoscience.

[antonvs]

> it is fundamentally unsuited for the task.

Very deepity. But you’ve apparently misunderstood mathematical notation - it’s just a shorthand, nothing stops one from expressing the same concepts in natural language.

> Furthermore, natural language specifications are, at best, wishful thinking.

More deepitism. There are plenty of counterexample to this, your claim only serves to suggest that you have no experience with software development.

> Feed this into a stochastic parrot

To might want to look for terminology in papers that were published after GPT 3.5 was released, it’ll make you sound less like an Amish person objecting to the “English”. Then again you used “clanker” in another comment, so I don’t hold out much hope.

[framel]

Very deepity?!? You lack basic grammar skills, yet here you are lecturing me about how mathematical notation is just syntactic sugar over natural language. That’s exactly the point: we already have a construct for telling computers what to do. We don’t need to use something subpar to express our intent.

[msla]

> deepity

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deepity

> A superficial equivocation which only seems to be profound.

[antonvs]

> You lack basic grammar skills

You lack basic knowledge of the field you're ineptly trying to criticize. "Deepity" was coined by the Harvard philosophy professor Daniel Dennett, and was specifically intended to address the sort of empty nonsense you were spewing in your previous comment. Take this as a shot across the bow and go study before you continue vomiting your uninformed opinions everywhere.

[framel]

Dumb illiterate cunt, "very deepity" is not valid English, go back to school. You can't put very before deepity!

[msla]

> coding is still a pseudoscience.

Amazing how you said that like it made any sense at all.

[framel]

amazing how you understood nothing from any of my words, how about using the clanker to vibe your understanding too?

[msla]

> amazing how you understood nothing from any of my words, how about using the clanker to vibe your understanding too?

"Coding is a pseudoscience" makes sense like "plumbing is a pseudoscience" makes sense: Fluid dynamics might be a pseudoscience, but plumbing either works or it doesn't, and it's either maintainable and modifiable or it isn't. Computer Science is what you're groping for, in your speech laden with things you will probably defend as not-slurs but which you're still bizarrely excited to get to use, but outright saying Computer Science is a pseudoscience might make you realize you're talking absolute nonsense.

[framel]

I get the impression you haven’t quite grasped what separates applied science from theoretical science.

[msla]

Are you even attempting to read what I wrote?

[rramadass]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48431591