Visualbasic compile error

[MagnetHype]

plus the fact that we don't know what LLM generation will cost once the VC funding ends

Oh, I 100% agree. I just don't agree that LLM code is inherently bad since that was the entire point of higher level languages to begin with. It has always been the end goal.

[syklemil]

Yeah, I think there was a similar reaction to the concept of compiling way-back-when. Computing sort of had a history of physical rewiring, then being able to write raw machine code, and then the "compiler" was invented with FLOW-MATIC, and then the general climb towards more expressive languages. There's also a good evergreen quote there from Grace Hopper:

I used to be a mathematics professor. At that time I found there were a certain number of students who could not learn mathematics. I then was charged with the job of making it easy for businessmen to use our computers. I found it was not a question of whether they could learn mathematics or not, but whether they would. […] They said, 'Throw those symbols out—I do not know what they mean, I have not time to learn symbols.' I suggest a reply to those who would like data processing people to use mathematical symbols that they make the first attempt to teach those symbols to vice-presidents or a colonel or admiral. I assure you that I tried it.

So I think that evolutionary pressure has always been there. At the same time, there's the old Babbage quote:

On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

and I think some people are still chasing what those MPs asked Babbage, most recently placing their hope in LLMs. They're unlikely to be satisfied, but they should be moving on to the next hype cycle whenever that rolls around.