I've been thinking about code generation a bit too much lately. Let's simply narrow it down to the act of programming.
PAST AND RECENT PRESENT
Our fundamental problem has been that human languages and computer languages are different. Computers couldn't interpret human language, but humans could interpret computer language. There was an asymmetry.
Humans who could understand computer language are relatively limited in numbers, but we have enough of them to get get most of our problems modeled in software.
Non-computer-fluent-human communicates instructions to computer-fluent-human who communicates instructions to the computer.
We solved the problem from the human side, while computers remained relatively stupid and unable to understand the human.
The barrier to software based solutions have always been humans. Humans who are fluent at communicating our instructions to computers are relatively rare. We are primarily in the stage of humans communicating to computers directly in computer language. And this solution has simply been too expensive to solve from the human side.
PRESENT AND IMMEDIATE VALUE
With the curent state of AI (LLMs and whatever else is cooking), the same problem has a potential to be solved from the other side. Computers communicating with humans in human language.
The immediate value we got from LLMs has been that that the computer itself listens to us, and tells us what instructions to give it in its computer language.
If you think about it, this is horribly inefficient. But good enough is good enough. There is immediate IRRESISTIBLE value in this.
(quite close) FUTURE
Code written by humans is always dead code. Static unchanging blobs with hardcoded pre-defined paths of execution. We have to think about all possible problem paths and their solutions in advance, and code it up, and hope that it is enough to solve problems.
If computers are directly communicating with us in human language, and then interpreting it into their own computer-language-instructions for themselves, the very concept of a "codebase" is gone. Code is now something very ephemeral. Something that is generated by the computer within itself for every human-given instruction, and then deleted. Like the subconscious instructions that arise in our minds that move our arms and fingers while we do someting.
This is something entirely new. No static & dead codebase. Codebase as a concept is dead.
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And if we get out of the dev profession and think about it objectively, THIS IS AMAZING.
The surface area of people who can directly work their problems through computers is gonna EXPLODE. People are limited to getting their probelms solved by computers only thorugh the apps and programs we created. Their solutions are prisoners to our interpretation of their problems.
Turns out, attention is all it needed.