AI and Programming

Already is programming a task that exists on the upper rungs of the great abstraction ladder; most software engineers and programmers are blissfully unaware of the details of compilers, interpreters, cache, CPU cycles and registers. I’d dare to say that even most of the details of the most used programming languages today remain elusive to most of its users.

Yet, we complain that writing code with natural language is somehow bad. Using an AI to generate code seems off to many, using it to play Go or generate art is somehow cheating.

On a certain level it is however just operating on a level even higher up in terms of abstraction and language.

• A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
• The dumbing-down of programming (1998) (Even in the past they complained…)