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A comment on Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming". Parent comment

Re:Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programm... by vbezhenar on Thursday April 03, 2025 @08:23AM (#43568613)
The point of LLM is to enable "ordinary people" to write software. This movement is along with "zero code platform", for example. Creating algorithms by drawing block-schemes, by dragging rectangles and arrows. This is old discussion and there are many successful applications of this nature. LLM is just another attempt to tackle this beast.

Professional developers don't need this ability indeed. Most professional developers, who had to deal with zero code platforms, probably would prefer to just work with ordinary code.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programm... by tremon on Thursday April 03, 2025 @09:06AM (#43569040)
I feel that's merely side-stepping the issue: if natural language is not succint and unambiguous enough to fully specify a software program, how will any "ordinary person" trying to write software with it be able to avoid these limitations?

In the end, people will find out that in order to have their program execute successfully they will need to be succinct in their wording and construct a clear logic flow in their mind. And once they've mastered that part, they're halfway to becoming a programmer themselves already and will either choose to hire someone for that task or they will teach themselves a non-natural programming language (as happened before with vbscript and php).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programm... by chongli on Thursday April 03, 2025 @10:03AM (#43569863)
I think this is the principle-agent problem at work. Managers/executives who don't understand what programmers do believing that programmers can be easily replaced. Why wouldn't LLM vendors offer to sell it to them?

I pity the programmers of the future who will be tasked with maintaining the gargantuan mess these things end up creating.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programm... by immibis on Thursday April 03, 2025 @11:43AM (#43571343)
No pity for the computer security industry though. It's going to get a lot of money.
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Re:Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programm... by lukan on Thursday April 03, 2025 @12:55PM (#43572445)
"I pity the programmers of the future who will be tasked with maintaining the gargantuan mess these things end up creating."

With even a little bit of confidence, they could do quite well otherwise.

[ Parent | on HN ]