> This basically applies to all programming?

That's true. But if you should describe the essence of probabilistic programming to someone used only to “classical” scientific computing, what would be the key point(s)?

BTW, I'm sorry if I came off as dismissive, I'm only frustrated not to grasp why it's considered to be such a step forward. AD I get it, all the differentials are automagically imputed directly from the source code, which is something that practically could not be done otherwise. But what I get from Turing or Gen are just nifty DSLs.