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0 pointsrickydroll8mo ago0 comments

Yes, in general, English is non-deterministic, e.g., reading a sentence with the absence or presence of an Oxford comma.

When I programmed for a living, I found coding quite tedious and preferred to start with a mix of English and mathematics, describing what I wanted to do, and then translate that text into code. When I discovered Literate Programming, it was significantly closer to my way of thinking. Literate programming was not without its shortcomings and lacked many aspects of programming languages we have come to rely on today.

Today, when I write small to medium-sized programs, it reads mostly like a specification, and it's not much bigger than the code itself. There are instances where I need to write a sentence or brief paragraph to prompt the LLM to generate correct code, but this doesn't significantly disrupt the flow of the document.

However, if this is going to be a practical approach, we will need a deterministic system that can use English and predicate calculus to generate reproducible software.

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daxfohl8mo ago

Interesting, I'm the opposite! I far prefer to start off with a bit of code to help explore gotchas I might not have thought about and to help solidify my thoughts and approach. It doesn't have to be complete, or even compile. Just enough to identify the tradeoffs of whatever I'm doing.

Once I have that, it's usually far easier to flesh out the details in the detailed design doc, or go back to the Product team and discuss conflicting or vague requirements, or opportunities for tweaks that could lead to more flexibility or whatever else. Then from there it's usually easier to get the rest of the team on the same page, as I feel I'll understand more concretely the tradeoffs that were made in the design and why.

(Not saying one approach is better than the other. I just find the difference interesting).

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