Comment by baby
6 days ago
I spoke with some professional translators early on and they were just in denial, getting even upset at the idea that an AI could replace them. I didn't push too much but felt bad for them, as they couldn't realize what was going to happen to their field. I really think that translation must be the most impacted field by AI.
Software engineers are the translators. We (as a metaphorical community are in denial). Read the 100s of comments on this post: either (AI code is wrong or this isn’t correct or it’s not effective or some other justification). At the end of the day it’s really hard to accept the change.
> Software engineers are the translators.
True, recently I started feeling that part of what I had been doing is simply translating natural language to programming languages. Though coding also involves things such as algorithm and data structures, context and background knowledge, but these can all be done in natural language. Once the natural language description is given, what remains is only translation. LLMs have good knowledge of almost anything, though they are currently weak on inference or derivation, but this already makes them good on the two end of software engineering -- context knowledge and translation.
I understand those people who hate LLMs for coding, I partly share the feeling, because I enjoy typing on a keyboard, editing part of the code, reading the characters, I am an Emacs user. If LLMs can do the work, even if just save the typing and editing part, some of the fun has been eliminated for me.
Think about chess and Go, though AI can easily beats human now, people are still playing it. For programming, if one day AI can do 80% of the programming work, I guess only few of programmers today can keep doing it as a job. Just like few people can play chess and Go as their job.
I don't think that's a fair characterisation. I gave these tools the benefit of the doubt and many genuine tries, and still do occasionally. My judgment that they're unfit for the task is based on finding that they objectively don't help me work. There are studies showing that LLM use slows experienced developers down, even as they believe the opposite. I used to be the only one in my immediate work environment who thought LLMs are of jack use in my development work. Over the past year, most devs who used LLMs heavily have now switched over to my view.
Translation is natural language in, natural language out. That has very little to do with programming. Dijkstra knew back in the 70s that the very concept of natural language programming was bullshit, and that fancy new tech is never going to change the fundamental issues with the idea. In my opinion, his argument is as valid as ever.
Edit: I wasn't trying to imply that natural to natural language translation is trivial. The best LLM tools can be pretty shit at that even today, too. Tried using localised Microsoft developer documentation lately. It's unintelligible.
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