> Why ever do anything at all with your money, ever, otherwise? Except for basic needs.
Why indeed? If people are only buying stuff because they are afraid of their money being worth less in the future then those are things people don't even want, let alone need. Why is it a good thing for us to endlessly churn out stuff people don't even want?
Nothing. It's just a number in an account. It's what we call money basically.
Banks don't profit from keeping your deposits, they profit from running the money supply which empowers them to create new money which they tax or, in other words, loans on which they charge interest.
Go and try to withdraw something tangible with intrinsic value from a bank and you'll see they don't owe you anything at all. The most you'll get from them is paper, but even then you'll find it withdraw all your money in paper.
I just opened an account for you in my own bank, in fact. You have one million credits. You are free to send and receive credits from anybody else with an account (which is nobody, unfortunately). I owe you nothing.
This is actually how a lot of software is written, sadly. I used to call it "trial and error programming". I've observed people writing C++ who do not have a mental model of memory but just try stuff until it compiles. For some classes of software, like games, that is acceptable, but for others it would be horrifying.
Now, it is actually completely possible to write UI code without any unit tests in a completely safe way. You use the functional core, imperative shell approach. When all your domain logic is in a fully tested, functional core, you can just go ahead and write "what works" in a thin UI shell. Good luck getting an LLM to rigidly conform to such an architecture, though.
I'm starting to think of this LLM thing a bit like fossil fuels.
We've got fossil fuels that were deposited over millions of years, a timescale we are not even properly equipped to imagine. We've been tapping that reserve for a few decades and it's caused all kinds of problems. We've painted ourselves into a corner and can't get out.
Now we've got a few decades worth of software to tap. When you use an LLM you don't create anything new, you just recycle what's already there. How long until we find ourselves in a very similar corner?
The inability of people to think ahead really astounds me. Sustainability should be at the forefront of everyone's mind, but it's barely even an afterthought. Rather, people see a tap running and just drink from it without questioning once where the water is coming from. It's a real animal brain thing. It'll get you as far as reproducing, but that's about it.
Lame. I'm convinced that people think DST actually creates more daylight. If people want more daylight, leave work earlier. Work less. Most of your jobs don't matter anyway. For people who have jobs that do matter, like teachers, nurses etc. the choice between 0 or +1 hardly makes a difference. Should have just gone with 0.
I don't have children but would still prefer permanent standard time because you don't magically get more daylight with DST. Just finish your stupid job earlier if you want "more daylight".
Natural language is natural because it's good for communicating with fellow humans. We have ways to express needs, wants, feelings, doubts, ideas etc. It is not at all "natural" to program a computer with the same language because those computers were not part of the development of the language.
Now, if we actually could develop a real natural language for programming that would be interesting. However, currently LLMs do not participate in natural language development. The development of the language is expected to have been done already prior to training.
Invented languages and codes are used everywhere. Chemical nomenclature, tyre sizes, mathematics. We could try to do that stuff in "natural" language, but it would be considered a serious regression. We develop these things because they empower us to think in ways that aren't "natural" and free our minds to focus on the problem at hand.
Natural languages are "natural" because they evolved as the de facto way for humans to communicate. Doesn't need to be with fellow humans, but humans were all we've been able to communicate with over our ~300,000 years of existence as a species. And we've done it in thousands of varieties.
> currently LLMs do not participate in natural language development
It's quite literally what LLMs are trained on. You create the core architecture, and then throw terabytes of human-generated text at it until a model that works with said text results. Doesn't matter if it participates in language development or not, it only matters that humans can communicate with it "naturally".
> Invented languages and codes
All languages are invented; the only difference is how conscious and deliberate the process was, which is a function of intended purpose. Just look at Esperanto. Or Valyrian.
A natural language is a living thing. Every day each speaker adjusts his model a tiny bit. This has advantages but also some serious disadvantages which is why technical writers are very careful to use only a small subset of the language in their writing.
For true natural language programming we'd need to develop a language for reliably describing programs, but this doesn't exist in the language, so why would it exist in the LLM models? It will never exist, unless we invent it, which is, of course, exactly what programming languages are.
Natural languages are not invented. Written scripts are said to be invented, but nobody says a natural language like English or French is invented. It just happened, naturally, as the name suggests.
If natural language were the end goal then mathematics and music would use it too. There's nothing stopping them.
> For true natural language programming we'd need to develop a language for reliably describing programs
We really don't. Eventually we won't even be programming anymore per se. Consider communicating with someone who isn't fluent in any language you know, and vice versa. In the beginning you need to use a pretty restricted vocabulary set so you understand each other, similar to a programming language. But over time as communication continues, that vocabulary set grows and things become increasingly "natural", and it's easier for you to "program" each other.
Same with LLMs. We just need to get to the point where a model has sufficient user context (as it already has all the vocabulary) for effective communication. Like OpenClaw is currently accessing enough context for enough use cases that its popularity is through the roof. Tell it to do something, and as long as it has access to the relevant tools and services, it just gets it done. All naturally.
Actually, learning to sing was never really valued. Anyone can learn to sing, but for most that means being a backing singer. Being a lead/soloist is more about timbre and presence (including to a not insignificant extent looks). It's something you either have or you don't.
Why do people think "agent coding" is a skill? There is not a single programmer who is "unable to program with agents". It's like saying Albert Roux was unable to heat up a ready meal in a microwave.
Why indeed? If people are only buying stuff because they are afraid of their money being worth less in the future then those are things people don't even want, let alone need. Why is it a good thing for us to endlessly churn out stuff people don't even want?
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