Comment by chasd00
7 hours ago
> My guess is that technical expertise matters less over time, and the ability to specify the desired outcome is eventually the only thing that becomes important
if you look at LLMs based coding as another step up in programming abstraction then it's clear this is the case. Think about the progression of programming languages. Over time, we go further and further from the hardware and closer and closer to specifying the desired outcome. The terminology, structure, and completeness of a user story that guides a codingagent to the desired output, and only the desired output, is the new programming language.
> if you look at LLMs based coding as another step up in programming abstraction then it's clear this is the case. Think about the progression of programming languages. Over time, we go further and further from the hardware and closer and closer to specifying the desired outcome. The terminology, structure, and completeness of a user story that guides a codingagent to the desired output, and only the desired output, is the new programming language.
But that entire narrative follows from one, single, very big "If". It is not a given that AIs are a step up in abstraction.
Like, copying the answers in a test isn't considered an abstraction, I don't consider copy-pasting AI into your codebase an abstraction.
in the case of tools like claudecode there's no copy/pasting. Claudecode updates files directly, runs tests, starts/stops server, everything else on its own (with your permission).
I guess to take it a step further, you can lay your requirements in order with guidance in a markdown file called 'myprogram.md'. Then tell ClaudeCode to read that file and do what it says. In that way, myprogram.md, actually your requirements doc, is the programming language being turned into the 1s and 0s the computer understands.