Re:Ask HN: Why don't people talk about programming by example?
by rococode on Monday November 12, 2018 @12:58AM
(#18430851)
I hadn't heard of it before so forgive me if I get something wrong. Two main thoughts:
1. It sounds like, to implement a robust program (and not just a pattern in Excel), you'd need to provide every different combination of input/output. This is just not feasible for any remotely large project. For example, if you need the program to handle an obscure error in a specific way, then you'd have to provide the series of inputs that causes the error.
2. If programming by example is characterized by giving inputs and outputs, then isn't it basically just supervised machine learning? In which case, we're still many years away from not needing to write the actual ML code ourselves in a standard programming language.
1. It sounds like, to implement a robust program (and not just a pattern in Excel), you'd need to provide every different combination of input/output. This is just not feasible for any remotely large project. For example, if you need the program to handle an obscure error in a specific way, then you'd have to provide the series of inputs that causes the error.
2. If programming by example is characterized by giving inputs and outputs, then isn't it basically just supervised machine learning? In which case, we're still many years away from not needing to write the actual ML code ourselves in a standard programming language.