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The Programmer Identity Crisis

(hojberg.xyz)
270 points imasl42 | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 16:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.228s | source
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pteetor ◴[21 Oct 25 17:21 UTC] No.45658530[source]▶
When COBOL was born, some people said, "It's English! We won't need programmers anymore!"

When SQL was born, some people said, "It's English! We won't need programmers anymore!"

Now we have AI prompting, and some people are saying, "It's English! We won't need programmers anymore!"

Really?

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Legend2440 ◴[21 Oct 25 17:24 UTC] No.45658579[source]▶
The problem I have with this argument is that it actually is English this time.

COBOL and SQL aren't English, they're formal languages with keywords that look like English. LLMs work with informal language in a way that computers have never been able to before.

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1. moritzwarhier ◴[21 Oct 25 17:58 UTC] No.45659175[source]▶
This is true.

But in faithful adherence to some kind of uncertainty principle, LLM prompts are also not a programming language, no matter if you turn down the temperature to zero and use a specialized coding model.

They can just use programming languages as their output.