←back to thread

Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

(www.cs.utexas.edu)
448 points nimbleplum40 | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 03:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
fedeb95 ◴[03 Apr 25 07:49 UTC] No.43566262[source]▶
this clearly has nothing to do with the current main usages of LLMs, it's about using natural language as an interface to produce accurate results, as a further abstraction on top of general purpose languages.
replies(1): >>43573399 #
recursive ◴[03 Apr 25 18:16 UTC] No.43573399[source]▶
What is the difference between those things?
replies(1): >>43579371 #
1. fedeb95 ◴[04 Apr 25 07:45 UTC] No.43579371[source]▶
LLMs take natural language as input and produces it as output (note that producing source code is the same thing). The algorithm that takes input and produces output is still written in mathematical precise symbols and needs to be accurate, even if the input and output aren't expressed in a formal language.

We will see if and when an algorithm can be parsed and executed from a natural language "source code" and if that is an improvement.

Also note that "source code" implies it is a code. Natural languages are not a code, that is, a unique mapping from a set to another.