I’ve made this joke a couple of times (hopefully not on the forum yet) but I like to imagine a future where AI slop has gotten out of hand and someone says, “Maybe we should come up with some kind of deterministic language to program computers with and we can all learn it—like a “programming language” if you will.”

I’m more in favor of thinking about what different approach we’ll need to organize and supply the requirements and solutions to the AI assuming they manage to pull it off beyond the surface.

The problem “vibecoding” faces is not a translation from ideas/requirements to code but from the problem domain to the solution domain. Who’s going do the work in-between if not humans? When a client or a business analyst unload their requirements onto developers, it’s a two way communication from then on, and not just a multiple-choice question. It is about finding the problem behind a problem that saves the day, not translating a solution into code.

Given the way the LLMs currently work, I simply don’t find it feasible for them to pattern match their way out of such situations, no matter how large the “model”.

And don’t get me wrong, I would love so much for the “AI” to be way smarter and help me more than it’s currently capable of. The bitter taste I’m left with after spending a considerable time hoping it will get me somewhere, and then resorting back to my own human intelligence feels so bad, like a complete waste of time. After a couple of such wasteful disappointments it takes me time to dare try again.

It’s just one possible scenario based on what’s happened in other industries - a few companies end up controlling the market, and from what we’ve seen of big tech, they sure do love their own languages/frameworks; if they control the tools they can ultimately control or influence the competition to some degree or another.

Going back to what independent languages can do, Elixir (and languages like Ruby) already have a head start in this imo - by being intuitive, natural, easy to use, and beautiful.

• If people enjoy programming in a certain language then this could be one way to remove reliance on AI and AI controlling firms.

• If a programming language is easy to use (like being intuitive and natural) then again, there could be less of a reliance on advanced AI/firms controlling them.

• If a programming language brings you joy, whether from the process or by just being beautiful, again, there could be less reason to want to use AI

In summary: in all this hype and excitement around AI focusing on things that might draw people into using the language directly (or with a very light sprinkle of AI) might be a real lifeline/advantage

It’s definitely something worth keeping in mind - what will happen if AI begin to create their own super optimised languages that will be difficult for us to understand - will we need some that humans can still use?

The funny thing is languages that are very popular right now may actually be the first to ‘die’/stop being used by humans - when AI gets to a certain acceptable level, who’s going to want to program in Javascript? (Not me! )

Lisp rules!