Off topic, but I remember fondly the pre-LLM days when I used to love reading about programming languages. I never got a chance to professionally work with Rust, but made some cool hobby projects with it. Would have eventually tried out zig too.
Now it all feels so pointless though. Like memorizing rules to do mental arithmetic. Sure, there is still use for language expertise, but not enough to get excited over new concepts and ideas.
I think (for now), it is still relevant. A language is an abstraction, and a good abstraction, like a good LLM harness, can be quite valuable.
Let’s say I’m writing some concurrent code with an LLM. I’d probably feel much safer having it write Rust, rather than C. So even in a post-LLM world, languages will continue to evolve as long as abstractions can be improved.
But do you still have enthusiasm for finding out about new language features or concepts? I'll do what it takes to get the job done, but the passion for it is totally gone.
There's a couple of languages I follow their roadmap and I find exciting, including Java and C#. I don't feel there's proper justification of writing backend services in something like python or ruby anymore, for example.
I found C# exciting when it was new and adding features that were important to me, but now it feels like it has become bogged down with chunks just abandoned on the alter of backwards compatibility (Expression, anyone?) and adding features I couldn’t care less about (null safe code, pattern matching, etc).
I worked with C# for a decade around the transition from .net to .net core to .net. I've come to really dislike it as a language because of it's implicity and abstractions but I'm surprised that you're not finding the new features intereting. All the work on immutability seems pretty awesome to me at least. Sure it's still this bastard version where you build "readonly" objects and put them into immutable collections, but I assume they'll work on this going forward.
I'm never going back to it, but I do think it's the best it's ever been.
karmakurtisaani · · focus · HN ↗
Now it all feels so pointless though. Like memorizing rules to do mental arithmetic. Sure, there is still use for language expertise, but not enough to get excited over new concepts and ideas.
ratorx · · focus · HN ↗
Let’s say I’m writing some concurrent code with an LLM. I’d probably feel much safer having it write Rust, rather than C. So even in a post-LLM world, languages will continue to evolve as long as abstractions can be improved.
karmakurtisaani · · focus · HN ↗
za3faran · · focus · HN ↗
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
Quothling · · focus · HN ↗
I'm never going back to it, but I do think it's the best it's ever been.