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Comment by exasperaited | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely none of that article has ever even so much as brushed past the colloquial definition of "calculus".

These guys actually seem rattled now.

Well, 'calculus' is the kind of marketing word that sounds more impressive than 'arithmetic' and I think 'quantum logic' has gone a bit stale, and 'AI-based' might give more hope to the anxious investor class, as 'AI-assisted' is a bit weak as it means the core developer team isn't going to be cut from the labor costs on the balance sheet, they're just going to be 'assisted' (things like AI-written unit tests that still need some checking).

"The Arithmetic of AI-Assisted Coding Looks Marginal" would be the more honest article title.

"Galaxy-brain pair programming with the next superintelligence"

Yes, unfortunately a phrase that's used in an attempt to lend gravitas and/or intimidate people. It sort of vaguely indicates "a complex process you wouldn't be interested in and couldn't possibly understand". At the same time it attempts to disarm any accusation of bias in advance by hinting at purely mechanistic procedures.

Could be the other way around, but I think marketing-speak is taking cues here from legal-ese and especially the US supreme court, where it's frequently used by the justices. They love to talk about "ethical calculus" and the "calculus of stare decisis" as if they were following any rigorous process or believed in precedent if it's not convenient. New translation from original Latin: "we do what we want and do not intend to explain". Calculus, huh? Show your work and point to a real procedure or STFU

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