LLMs to inspect:
- Simple robust syntax
> - One obvious way to do things
That always leads to more verbosity.
Much syntactic sugar is a more specialized way to do a subset of a more general thing.
Why have `a + b` when you could just write `a.add(b)`? Because it's easier to read. The general functionality needs to account for all cases, the specialized one can cut that down just the things that matter to a specific common use case.
- Static type checking
\<meme>Which one?\</meme>
That's a very, very deep can of worms.
One could argue that of an LLM is generating the code, then the type system doesn't need to be understandable to humans, so throw in all the features you'd ever want and just have the LLM change the code if it's not valid. Unions of higher order generic functions, sure!
Or one could argue that there should be minimal magic, because the LLM understands the language only by its source, so everything should be explicit.
If the LLM can prove that something is sounds to the compiler, accept it. Give ways to give extra evidence of soundness, like declaring invariants and contacts.
- Purely functional encouraged, escape hatches for performance
"One obvious way to do things", except when you need two. Purely functional except when it matters.
Why doesn't performance always matter?
(And how will an LLM know if it does?)
Being purely functional is nice for data, but not for data structures that are updated in place. If all you do is stream data from one DB query into another, then your mutable state is the database. Otherwise might as well accept that it's a multiparadigmatic language with both imperative, functional and OO features. Just like all the others.
- Inspect-able, testable, and reviewable in small pieces
Good modularity and abstraction. No global scope.
Maybe something like dependency injection to decouple from dependencies?
(That does not make code readable, though.)
- Something like formal predicates, preconditions, post-conditions, assertions, or effects typing
That!
LLMs look at the source. The more explicit the source is, the less it has to infer from context or existing knowledge.
If the LLM can create its own predicates, accepted by the static type/analysis system, to prove that it's code is sounds, that allows more flexibility than having to fit into any fixed type system.
Do we want or need that flexibility? Maybe.
Most LLM-generated code is directly inspired by existing idiomatic code in the same language. Some is translated from other languages, trying to match up idioms. Some is just blindly trying to make unit tests pass. We could end up with generated predicates tailored to specific unit tests, not the actual concept.