taylodl

Being charitable, one could argue that you spent extra time because you cared - which, hopefully, is what your friends are doing. Some people send sympathy cards from Hallmark for the same reason - to express what they find difficult to express. Is it really any different? Something to think about in this age of LLMs.

I'm old enough to remember when this wasn't the case. Compilers back in the 80s and even early 90s had bugs. Heck, even Intel processors had bugs!

The bigger problem though with treating LLMs as a compiler is they're non-deterministic. The same prompt can generate two different outputs at two different times. One may be correct, the other may have subtle bugs. In the end, we should be focusing on what we should have been focusing on all along: what evidence do I have that this code is correct?

AI is a productivity-enhancement tool. We're working on getting real numbers, but what we'll do is go to our other backlog of work (not the mainstream backlog I was talking about above) that was "shelved" because the ROI didn't make sense. Well, with increased productivity it might make sense now. That would add even more work to the backlog.

I get it. A lot of people here on HN pay attention to FAANG and startups. Well, the FAANG companies are now decades old and have pretty much run their course. Startups have always been dicey, but nowadays we're back to the model before the mid-90s where industry experience mattered more than being a so-called "serial entrepreneur." All that is to say if you're Gen X and were in this industry back in the 80s and early 90s, then things are looking very familiar.

Don't get me wrong, I think Hurd is interesting, but I seriously doubt it's going to have a big impact on anything as it reflects the software engineering philosophies of the 1980s.