Bret Victor - The Future of Programming

</> htmx ~ Yes, and...

In this essay, Carson Gross discusses his advice to young people interested in computer science worried about the future given the advancements in AI.

Its Time for a New Programming Language

Today, when compared to any other point in programming history, we find ourselves spoiled for choice when it comes to programming…

X : Do you think AI / vibe coding is not worthwhile? Me : Are you kidding? I was talking about conversational programming (what you call vibe coding) back in 2018. Of course, I think it&#39;s important.… | Simon Wardley | 44 comments

X : Do you think AI / vibe coding is not worthwhile? Me : Are you kidding? I was talking about conversational programming (what you call vibe coding) back in 2018. Of course, I think it's important. I think the approach we're using currently is flawed. X : Why? Me : Well, I could go on about the basics such as the medium is wrong (needs to be more image / whiteboard based rather than text) or how we're getting wrapped up in deterministic outputs (text based code) rather than realising the end outputs will eventually be non-deterministic models or we're still learning practices in this space especially with agents and how we rushing ahead into failure creating trust issues. There's a lot of messy stuff happening. But my real interest is with turning software engineering into an engineering discipline. X : Isn't it? Me : If I look at a map of decision making then testing (specifically TDD) is an engineering topic (see figure 1) but the development part is firmly a craft (see figure 2). If we want to make development an engineering subject then we need to learn from testing i.e. we should be building context specific tools (think a test suite) from lots of micro tools (think tests). See figure 3. X : And AI can help? Me : Oh, yes. In two parts - the construction of micro tools which helps us improve our ttA (time to answer) and in the construction of new hypothesis which helps us improve our ttQ (time to question). See figure 4. X : And is that happening? Me : Very slowly. Remember you have a multi billion dollar tool industry that doesn't want you creating tools and hence they're trying to flog you old tools with a skim of AI. X : But we need people selling pickaxes. Me : Sure. But they've been telling us that their pickaxes work everywhere ... making soup, you need a pickaxe with added AI. X : But coding is coding. Me : An electronic healthcare system is not the same as an online gambling site. The contexts are completely different. It's why the test suites are different and a test is nothing more than a micro tool. Why don't we compose our tool for that context out of micro tools ... just like testing? X : Because it's hard? Me: Pickaxe salespeople must love you. That's their marketing literature. Reminds me of the early days of Test Driven Development (TDD) where most people thought it was mad to build a test suite out of thousands of small tests. | 44 comments on LinkedIn

Why the fuss about conversational programming?

First, there isn’t much fuss … yet. But there will be.

(iterate think thoughts): Painting with Gaussians

Dmitri's blog about programming, Clojure, and software development

A quote from Andrew Quinn

One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the …

The Irrational Decision

How the computer revolution shaped our conception of rationality—and why human problems require solutions rooted in human intuition, morality, and judgment

Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

Reflections on autonomy and the value of thinking for ourselves

Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It

In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird.