zlacker

> That could be said about compiling higher-level languages

You write the program as source code.

Prompting an LLM to cobble together lines from other people's work is not writing a program.

>>chrisj+(OP)
"You write the program as source code."

His language is LLM prompts. If he can check them into git and get reasonably consistent results if he ran the prompts multiple times, just like we expect from our JavaScript or C or assembly or machine code, I don't see the problem.

I knew a guy who could patch a running program by flipping switches on the front panel of a computer. He didn't argue my C language output 'is not writing a program'...

>>readth+u5j
> His language is LLM prompts. If he can check them into git and get reasonably consistent results if he ran the prompts multiple times

You're joking, right? There's nothing "reasonably consistent" about LLMs. You can input the same prompt with the same context, and get wildly different results every time. This is from a single prompt. The idea that you can get anything close to consistent results across a sequence of prompts is delusional.

You can try prompt "hacks" like STRONGLY EMPHASIZING correct behaviour (or threaten to murder kittens like in the old days), but the tool will eventually disregard an instruction, and then "apologize" profusely for it.

Comparing this to what a compiler does is absurd.[1]

Sometimes it feels like users of these tools are in entirely separate universes given the wildly different perspectives we have.

[1]: Spare me the examples of obscure compiler inconsistencies. These are leagues apart in every possible way.

>>chrisj+(OP)
Does a director make a movie? Serious question. Can we say that Steven Spielberg made Jurassic Park? Can we say the George Lucas made Star Wars? Directors rarely act in their own movies, write their own scripts, operate the cameras, operate the lights, operate the mics, edit the final cuts, write the scores, play the scores, create the VFX, do the film printing or the marketing. They prompt Biological Thought Models to do those things and cobble the results together. Really nothing a director traditionally does is actually physically making a film.

And yet, I don't see a problem with saying directors made their movies. Sure, it was the work of a lot of talented individuals contributing collectively to produce the final product, and most of those individuals probably contributed more physical "creation" to the film than the director did. But the director is a film maker. So I wouldn't be so confident asserting that someone who coordinates and architects an application by way of various automation tools isn't still a programmer or "writing software"