Thread

1. talon8635 · 1790477425 · focus · HN ↗

   I don’t know how stupid of a suggestion this is, but if no one is reading the code anymore (I do, but I hear many in much more elite shops than mine do not), then should we not just be using AI to write binary or machine code?

   1. pianopatrick · 1790477659 · focus · HN ↗

      I think that just like humans, AI will make logical mistakes at some rate linked to lines of code.

      Like I remember reading human studies that people make 1.5 - 5 errors per 100 loc.

      If AI works in a similar way then we should stick to higher level languages that minimize loc

      1. calvinmorrison · 1790478035 · focus · HN ↗

         > that minimize loc

         you can do a hell of a lot with a PERL one liner. What i'd recommend is extremely obvious languages like Golang

         1. imron · 1790485562 · focus · HN ↗

            What I'd recommend is languages that move entire classes of errors to compile time - like Rust.

            1. pianopatrick · 1790486266 · focus · HN ↗

               If you're going all the way down that route, you might use something like Ada or OCaml or Haskell. They can catch classes of errors at compile time that Rust does not cover.

               1. imron · 1790493583 · focus · HN ↗

                  Definitely a reasonable thing to consider and this is the direction I would like to see programming languages evolve towards in the AI era.

                  Move errors from runtime to compile time as much as possible.

                  1. torudev · 1790686390 · focus · HN ↗

                     I agree. I was writing a task runner, and when I used generative AI to write Haskell code, it tended to produce higher-quality code compared to other languages. In particular, I’ve rarely encountered runtime errors when testing the code. On the other hand, when it came to design, there were errors where my intentions weren’t conveyed properly.

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