Thread

1. bengold14 · 1790612793 · focus · HN ↗

   I see this everyday. The problem is code is the wrong abstraction for the work we do. LLMs have solved coding, but they haven't solved systems, collaboration or system maintenance.

   Edit: Since I seem to have touched a nerve - I&#x27;ve been working on a project to solve this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.archme.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.archme.io if you want to know my thoughts on the right abstraction

   1. verdverm · 1790613137 · focus · HN ↗

      When you say &quot;solved coding,&quot; what does this mean, what does it look like?

      I have strong disagreement because it sounds like, by analogy or proxy, we have also &quot;solved writing&quot;

      1. glimshe · 1790613323 · focus · HN ↗

         &quot;solved coding&quot; is type of thing you say if you want to sound smart.

         Saying that LLMs have &quot;reduced the cost of coding&quot; would be boring. And using your analogy, pencils, typewriters and computers have all reduced the cost of writing, but writers are still around.

         1. yetanotherjosh · 1790624476 · focus · HN ↗

            I&#x27;d separate &quot;coding&quot; from software engineering. Software engineering is not solved. The new challenge in software engineering is how to properly use AI to maximum leverage and nobody has solved that.

            But, &quot;coding&quot; is, except that solving it means using techniques that are still barely understood and barely described today (something I&#x27;m hoping to be able to communicate better myself about). It is now possible (at least for most consumer software, I would not say applications where human life or extreme risk is involved) to work exclusively in the domain of natural language requirements, natural language architectural&#x2F;design decisions, and natural language test cases, and deliver product of equal or better software quality than average human code authors could have produced. Even in a language that you plausibly don&#x27;t actually know how to code in, because the language itself can often be separable from the requirements and verification process.

            If someone who doesn&#x27;t know a language or framework can plausibly produce better software using it, and faster, than a team of people who do know the language&#x2F;framework (and I would strongly argue that is more than plausible now with models like Astra and Fable) then it&#x27;s not just &quot;coding is less expensive.&quot;

            It&#x27;s like saying computers make complex calculations less expensive. That&#x27;s true, but it&#x27;s missing the real paradigm shift.

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