Will this tendency to reinvent the wheel survive the transition to AI-driven software development? What would be the impetus, when everyone is programming in English (or some other human language), and the 'compiler' has a higher IQ than the 'programmer'? Note that any new language will by definition not be in the corpus of information any frontier model was trained on.

I feel (fear?) we are basically locked in to a world where C, C++, Rust, Go, Python and Javascript will be the assembly code we compile to, and there will be no path or even raison dêtre to improve or innovate in the field of programming languages as we understand them today.

What I do suspect might happen is the AI's themselves propose changes to the base languages that improve their ability to code for us.

Strange times ahead.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47041886

Points: 4

# Comments: 6

When I write piece of code that is elegant, efficient, and -- "right" -- I get a dopamine rush, like I finished a difficult crossword puzzle. Seems like that joy is going to go away, replaced by something more akin to developing a good relatioship with a slightly quirky colleague who happens to be real good (and fast) at some things -- especially things management likes, like N LOC per week -- but this colleague sucks up to everyone, always thinks they have the right answer, often seems to understand things on a superficial level, and oh -- works for $200 / month...

Shades of outsourcing to other continents...

But the insights gleaned from that battle are (for Claude) lost forever as soon as I start on a new task.

The way LLM's (fail to) handle memory and in-situ learning (beyond prompt engineering and working within the context window) is just clearly deficient compared to how human minds work.

Another kvetch: using car seats in taxis. Maybe it's different now with Uber but 20 years ago the drivers hated it because you have to find the seat belt and secure the car seat...

Switch to Claude (IMSHO, I think Gemini is considered on par). Use a proper coding tool, cutting & pasting from the chat window is so last week.

Another way of looking at it: there are 4 states going in (0 or 1 on 2 pushers) but there are only 2 states of the 'memory' contraption, so you lose a bit on every iteration (like classical Boolean circuits)

Exactly wrong. See the halting problem

The core ability with perfect pitch is to remember a note persistent over many months or years. If you know a song well, and you have perfect pitch, you will almost always sing it in the correct pitch. Not within a semitone; within a percent, enough that if you were singing with the recording, you would not be out of tune.

There is overwhelming evidence that this ability is either genetic or acquired at a very early age. It's a difference between people like the way you can fold your tongue or move your thumb. It's innate.

someone with musical training can use this skill to identify the 12 tones of western music, but that's frankly just a party trick built on the core capability.

Here's the concrete example. My son has perfect pitch. I didn't know this until we were watching a Beatles movie, I think A Hard Day's night, and he asked why the instruments Were Out Of Tune. Later I played the record and compared it with the video, and they were off by less than a quarter tone. The Beatles another musicians in the '60s often used very speed to subtly change the tone and tempo and many Beatles Tunes are at a pitch that lies between the standard a 440 12 lb scale