AI coding and the peanut butter and jelly problem

Okay, but like.

If you do have that skill to communicate clearly and describe the requirements of a novel problem, why is the AI still useful? Actually writing the code should be relatively trivial from there. If it isn't, that points to a problem with your tools/architecture/etc. Programmers IMX are, on average, far too tolerant of boilerplate.

>Actually writing the code should be relatively trivial

For you, maybe. This statement assumes years of grueling training to become bilingual in a foreign programming language. And I can't type at 1000 tokens/s personally - sometimes I just want to press the voice dictate key and blab for five seconds and move on to something actually interesting.

>This statement assumes years of grueling training to become bilingual in a foreign programming language

...So, less experienced programmers are supposed to be happy that they can save time with the same technology that will convince their employers that a human isn't necessary for the position?

(And, frankly, I've overall quite enjoyed the many years I've put into the craft.)

You're seeing this entirely from the perspective of people who do programming as their job. I'm seeing it from the perspective of the other 99% of society. It feels really good that they're no longer gatekept by the rigid and cryptic interfaces that prevented them from really communicating with their computer, just because it couldn't speak their native tongue.

The point of the PB&J thing is exactly to demonstrate that your native tongue isn’t precise enough to program a computer with. There’s a reason those interfaces are rigid, and it’s not “gatekeeping”. (The cryptic part is just to increase information density — see COBOL for an alternative.)

I think https://docs.cursor.com/chat/agent has shown plain English is precise enough to program a computer with, and some well respected programmers have become fans of it https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383

I only took exception to the original statement - that coding is trivial, and the questioning if AI is even useful. So many people are finally able to create things they were never able to. That's something to celebrate. Coding isn't trivial to most people, it's more of an insurmountable barrier to entry. English works - that's why a clear-minded project manager can delegate programming to someone fluent in it, without knowing how to code themselves. We don't end up with them dumping a jar of jam on the floor, because intelligent beings can communicate in the context of a lot of prior knowledge they were trained on. That's how AI is overcoming the peanut butter and jelly problem of English. It doesn't need solutions defined for it, a word to the wise is sufficient.