The JavaScript developers are checking in JavaScript code that they ostensibly understand. That is not the same as prompting an LLM to generate Zig that they don't understand, and expecting someone to merge it.

ah, i see what you're saying. fair point! though the argument was that LLMs essentially are a yet higher level programming language (or, rather, let you write in a higher level language).

They do let you write in a higher-level language, but it's not really analogous to a higher-level programming language. The ambiguity and lack of determinism makes prompting fundamentally different from using a high level programming language.

Using an LLM isn't analogous to using a higher level language.

I assume you're some sort of programmer and I genuinely wonder how in the world can someone in good faith downplay non-determinism and ambiguity when talking about a programming language.

High-level languages can certainly yield inefficient code when compiled, or maybe different code among different compilers, but they're always meant to allow their users to know exactly what to expect from what they put together in their programs. I've always considered this a hard fact, I simply cannot wrap my head around working in a way that forces me to abandon this basic assumption.

The main difference is that the input to an LLM is in an ambiguous language.

A programming language is allowed to be ambiguous, I don’t know of a definition that excludes that!

All programming languages I know of provide at least some guarantees about the program’s behavior.

The language specs may be, but an implementation is never ambiguous. When you encounter and undefined behavior in the specs, that’s when you look at your compiler/interpreter docs.

So is JavaScript haha.

So by your logic all the PMs, managers and customers are programmers, right? After all, there’s a human compiler that takes their input and produces a program?

They are programmers when they write a prompt and get runnable code as a result, yes… but no if asking a human to write the code because if you have an intermediate, manual step between the text and the running code, you don’t have an automated process and hence it’s no longer even an application, let alone a “compiler”.

Why does it matter if a human or a machine is responsible for turning the prompt into code?

If there's a black box which I can send C code into one side of and get faithful machine code out the other, I'd call that box a "compiler". I wouldn't rename it if I later find out that there are little elves inside doing the translation.

Sorry but that’s a childish take.

Would you mind explaining why?

> That’s funny because it’s exactly, literally the same. The difference is it’s not deterministic.

So it is not, by your own admission, "exactly, literally the same".

Take it gently, the poor thing doesn't understand the difference between code and talking about code.

If AI worked as advertised then "AI Literacy" would just be "Literacy".

It should always be "hold for control" and "tap for esc".

Why would you ever disable paste? It can only make it more likely that the user will make a mistake (and hate you for making the form harder to fill out).

I have an AutoHotkey that just takes whatever is in my clipboard and sends it through as individual virtual keystrokes, specifically for defeating paste-disabled form fields.

It gets way more use than I wish it did.

> Hover over the green button in the top left of the window.

Weirdly it still doesn't quite do what I want. It leaves a gap around the edge of the window for some reason.

AI models in general seem to get different assembly languages mixed up easily.

If it came pre-installed I don't see what the difference would be. Many people don't know how to do anything other than launch certain applications on Windows either.

Except that it is a reality that is yet to happen in most countries.

Most people also don't buy laptops from some online store that only HN readers know about.

Right, but the whole point of this thread is that the advantage Windows has is that it comes pre-installed.

Some of which run better on Linux than Windows.

They might for whatever reason, however without Windows they would not have existed in first place.

I'm not sure I understand what your point is...

Without Windows they probably would have been written for whatever else was most popular instead.

or run without an OS like an arcade or console.

Can you explain how this is relevant here?

Adding a new feature to unify existing features is perfectly isomorphic to defining a new standard to unify existing standards.

It's not though, unless the new feature and existing features continue to exist as disjoint things. If the new feature subsumes the old ones, then you've reduced the number of features in the language.

The same is true of standards.