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Comment by acituan | Hacker News Reader

> compilers only got better and better

At no point compilers produced stochastic output. The intent user expressed was translated down with a much much higher fidelity, repeatability and explainability. Most important of all, it completely removed the need for the developer to meddle with that output. If anything it became a verification tool for the developer‘s own input.

If LLMs are that good, I dare you skip the programming language and have it code in machine directly next time. And it is exactly how it is going to feel like if we treat them as valuable as compilers.

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> At no point compilers produced stochastic output. [...] Most important of all, it completely removed the need for the developer to meddle with that output.

Yes, once the optimizations became sophisticated enough and reliable enough that people no longer needed to think about it or go down to assembly to get the performance they needed. Do you get the analogy now?

I don't know why you'd think your analogy wasn't clear in the first place. But your analogy can't support you on the assertion that optimizations will be sophisticated and reliable enough to completely forget about the programming language underneath.

If you have any first principles thinking on why this is more likely than not, I am all ears. My epistemic bet is that it is not going to happen, or somehow if we end up there the language we will have to use to instruct them is not going to be different than any other high level programming language that the point will be moot.

> But your analogy can't support you on the assertion that optimizations will be sophisticated and reliable enough to completely forget about the programming language underneath.

Where did I make that assertion?

Here is where I got that impression:

> once the optimizations became sophisticated enough

Either way I am not trying to litigate here. Feel free to correct me if your position was softer.

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