Comment by sublinear
17 days ago
Sure it is. I haven't made discussion impossible. If you choose to reply to my line of discussion, I eliminated an entire category of what I think are trivial arguments that miss the point. Yes indeed calling that stuff trivial is my opinion, but I think you were trying to say something else.
You found room by claiming I have some other opinions. In fact, I originally asked some questions you chose not to answer.
That all begs some more questions: what about my statements isn't factual? What about your statements isn't factual?
I have a few guesses. You may think AI can write a better compiler. You may think AI has already written a better compiler. You may think humans shouldn't write code anymore.
All of those are examples of opinions you might declare, but maybe you meant to say something factual. If those really are the only things you meant to debate, I have to agree I didn't think they were going anywhere and have been done to death. I thought maybe you had something else in mind.
I think your perspective is an instantaneous one, which is fine, because that's where facts about behaviors of systems (that are swapped out every few months) must come from. Since we can't know the performance of architectures that will be released in the near future, we can only form opinions and speculate about them. Not wanting to speculate, and framing everything on what exists right now, is fine. Listening to people guess is usually boring. And, knowing the practical outcome of ongoing research is hit or miss.
But, if your perspective is immediate, you need to be more precise with your words, to not confuse the reader into thinking that you're extending your observations, that apply only to the present, into the future.
I personally don't find discussions on current capabilities, about something that was fiction some years ago, and has shown a fairly steady rate of increase in utility, all that interesting. I'm an engineer at heart and live and enjoy the iterative process of improvement. As a consequence, I think the present is the boring place, because that's where iteration dies! I don't think we'll entertain each other. ;)