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Comment by vladharbuz | Hacker News Reader

Do you remember when someone made a vim extension that would autocomplete code with Stack Overflow answers, as a joke? Why is it that in 2021 we're taking this kind of tool seriously? Have we reduced our field and craft to something that can just be autocompleted?

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Because 99% of our job is putting together standard logic that should've been included in most language's standard library?

Automate the rote software engineering so it's built upon a shared, healthy, secure, etc codebase... Leaving only the harder, more-fun 1% for us to noodle on instead.

The standard patterns that frequently emerge within languages are often low complexity special cases of potentially more powerful constructs and usage paradigms.

I might start with a simple for loop:

  for(int i = 0; i < limit; i++){
      ...
  }

And then decide that I can make it more concise:

  for(int i: [0 .. limit]){
      ...
  }

But I still need the base form, for less likely scenarios:

  for(int i = 1; i < limit; i <<= 1){
      ...
  }

A language or its libraries can support new cleaner forms for fundamental structures and frequently repeated boilerplate constructs - but it increases library/compiler complexity, cannot always be predicted ahead of time and often sacrifices power for specificity and apparent language simplicity.

https://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/

https://github.com/drathier/stack-overflow-import

https://github.com/james9909/stackanswers.vim

I think a major goal behind software engineering will one day to be models only, rules follow. Right now we write code that "creates" those models and rules and UIs.

At some point in the future we won't need auto complete because the only thing we'll be coding is the model itself, and then we'll provide rules (in some format, not a language) and the UI will know what to do. We see a lot of that happening in the no-code movement today.

I agree. Things are becoming more declarative over time. And it progresses over decades, as it takes that long to work out the right things to be able to declare.

It's actually a statement about what complexity paths remain outside the realms of what can be ~comprehended by AI (or whatever it does instead), and what still requires the capabilities and creativity of the human mind.

As long as you're smart enough that you are still required to at least delegate some tasks to a machine, you're still worth keeping around - even if you're not always busy.

Word processors have autocomplete. Gmail has it for whole sentences. Is the field of writing a novel it screenplay something that can be autocompleted?

There are lots algorithms that can just be copy and pasted. Of course many of those get turned into a library. You still have to know how to string those together.

If such a tool were built well and worked well, wouldn't that be a good thing?

I think "commoditizing" programming would be great for humanity.

It's because this time it uses AI!

Are you seriously asking why software developers would want tools to help them write boilerplate code faster? Is it an affront to our craft to use an IDE over Notepad? Maybe drafters should refuse to use CAD tools because the craft originated with pen and paper.

Why not select a language / framework that reduces biolerplate? I use laravel a lot and boilerplate code is taken care of in the framework itself.

Why would you assume I'm selecting the language of the projects I'm working on?

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