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   Chris Hanson (eschaton@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 31-Jul-2023 01:25:52 JST Chris Hanson

   “The “Promise” of “Easier” Programming,” wherein I talk about why 4GLs were temporarily successful, why that was temporary, and why “programming via LLMs” will have the same fate: https://eschatologist.net/blog/?p=374

   • Embed this notice
     Becky is not a bear (renewedrebecca@oldbytes.space)'s status on Monday, 31-Jul-2023 08:21:07 JST Becky is not a bear

     in reply to

     @eschaton I took a robotics class that used LabView instead of a normal programming language. It was terrible. There's no reality in which drawing a loop using an entire screen's worth of symbols is easier than typing out "foreach." I could not finish that class quickly enough.

     clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Monday, 31-Jul-2023 08:21:44 JST clacke

     in reply to

     @eschaton Or, in comic form:

     commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/…

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     Joe Pasqua (bitsplusatoms@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 13:50:49 JST Joe Pasqua

     in reply to

     • bitsavers

     @eschaton @bitsavers Good points. Here is another perspective.

     For many, Excel took the place of 4GLs. People could get things done in an ad hoc way when they couldn't get IT attention/resources. These aren't programs in the way you or I think about them, but they fulfill a need. This happens continually in large and small businesses.

     I believe that at a minimum LLMs will amplify the power of these non-programmers to write more “code” that would otherwise go unwritten. See MS Office Copilot.

     clacke likes this.
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     Yani Bellini Saibene (yabellini@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 13:50:51 JST Yani Bellini Saibene

     in reply to

     • bitsavers
     • Joe Pasqua
     • Jon Udell

     @judell @bitsplusatoms @eschaton @bitsavers I will add that Excel does something that very few of the other programming languages let you do: you can program in your native language (you don't have to use English). For example, Excel has a Spanish version for each function, so I can even "guess" the function name and don't need to remember that "promedio" is AVG or MEAN or something without any sense to me. Only 4.8% of the world's population speaks English as a first language. ;-)

     clacke likes this.
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     Jon Udell (judell@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 13:50:53 JST Jon Udell

     in reply to

     • bitsavers
     • Joe Pasqua

     @bitsplusatoms @eschaton @bitsavers Agree. LLMs promise to democratize many kinds of scripting.

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     Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 13:50:54 JST Tim Bray

     in reply to

     • bitsavers
     • Joe Pasqua

     @bitsplusatoms @eschaton @bitsavers I'm old, I remember like yesterday when edicts came out from the mainframe IT people, forbidding PCs because they were unproven and risky, and the finance people told IT to pound sand, because budgeting tasks went from weeks to minutes. Some foolish IT people escalated to the CEO.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and clacke like this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 13:50:55 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • bitsavers
     • Joe Pasqua
     • Tim Bray

     @timbray @bitsavers @bitsplusatoms @eschaton Yeah, managed IT vs homegrown solutions in the departments is a delicate balance.

     You don't want IT to have to be involved in every little thing, and on the other hand you don't want core business processes to rely on some spreadsheet on a shared drive with lax access controls, no security assessment, no versioning and no lifecycle management.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 14:34:04 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • bitsavers
     • Joe Pasqua
     • Tim Bray

     @timbray @bitsavers @bitsplusatoms @eschaton Oh, I am under no illusions. Personally I have worked in all kinds of places with various degrees of success in this area. For a public example for where it's gone really bad just look at the UK Covid Excel debacle.

     I'm just acknowledging that IT tyranny and unmanaged spreadsheet Wild West are both extreme and harmful, and I'm saying that a smart company creates anywhere from a token effort to an excellent control framework to achieve the right balance.

     The place I'm currently at seems to have the right balance so far (I've been here for four years). People aren't hiding things from IT and we cooperate to formalize processes where it's helpful to the people performing the work.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Tim Bray (timbray@cosocial.ca)'s status on Tuesday, 01-Aug-2023 14:34:05 JST Tim Bray

     in reply to

     • clacke
     • bitsavers
     • Joe Pasqua

     @clacke @eschaton @bitsavers @bitsplusatoms

     Ouf. I wish I didn't have to be the one to break the news to you…