Hi Jessica, On 2026-07-23 13:30, Jessica Clarke wrote: > On 23 Jul 2026, at 12:04, Christian Kastner <[email protected]> wrote: >> Just like we have compilers, so that we don't have to hand-write >> assembly anymore. > > LLMs and compilers are very different in their nature, and as someone > whose day job is working on compilers quite frankly it’s insulting how > much people want to say LLMs are the same for code. Compilers are > engineered to follow input and output specifications and generally any > miscompilation is regarded as a serious bug. LLMs are a roll of the > dice where you pray you get something sensible out, and if you don’t, > that’s just accepted as a thing that happens, and you have to pull the > slot machine arm again after another prayer.
I did not mean to imply literal equivalence, and I now see how my statement might come across. Apologies. What I meant to say is: sometimes, a laborious task that is considered normal, or the one way to do something, is replaced by a task that eventually achieves the same goal, but with less labor. Best, Christian
