JPWatching a thing about LLM coding assistants and all this "agentic" stuff still looks like a script but worse.
It's a slow Selenium script that is wrong half the time.👨💼 You can link services together with MCP servers!
So you reinvented Electronic Data Interchange only sometimes the data is lies. At least it's not SOAP or CORBA, I guess.
So you reinvented Electronic Data Interchange only sometimes the data is lies. At least it's not SOAP or CORBA, I guess.
Christian Keefer-MoomawPeople who think programming in natural language is a good idea haven't spent much time dealing with the legal system.
🦓 Type safety is very important in natural language AI programming, which is why we use TypeScript.
Define 'reasonably'
Define 'reasonably'
Quinn Norton
LR
Primo
Fi 🏳️⚧️
Nu Modular@daedalus Inverting legal ease makes me wonder where's my jar gone?
David P@pewnack it is the only language most of them have met and they think it is normal to have spelling bees
Phil Burg (he/him)@daedalus And they don't know why COBOL was invented (and all the other times people tried and failed to eliminate programmers)
aurorus@daedalus computer people who talk confidently about legal stuff haven’t spent enough time understanding the legal system.
Matt Hall
the gripe ibis@daedalus i know nothing about writing code, and when llms caused me to have to learn what nlp was, i frowned so hard i pulled a muscle in my forehead.
natural language programming: it's not any of those things, in any combination.
Bakunin Boys@daedalus or worse: they have.
Evelyn Estelle"People who think programming in natural language is a good idea haven't spent much time dealing with the legal system."
@daedalus Or with programming.
Or with this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDA3_5982h8
Exact Instructions Challenge - THIS is why my kids hate me. | Josh Darnit
Oblomov@daedalus I have some 3+ decades of experience programming, and I'll say this: I actually like the idea of programming in a natural language (Inform 7 is brilliant), but at the same time I'm well aware it doesn't mean what they think it means, and I'm always thinking about ways they could be made to understand.
(BTW I'd *love* it if there was a way to formalize legal systems!)
Laurence Diver
Pete / Syllopsium@daedalus hey now, come on! Natural language programming languages work very well.
Provided you use *very specific language*.
I've played around with Inform 7, and in my opinion it's better to use the more prescriptive Inform 6 (which 7 compiles down to, anyway). Ultimately there will be many cases where specific language is required, so you might as well just use a non natural language system.
UltrasonicMadness (he/him)@daedalus To be fair, that could be an amusing esolang.
WILLIAM B PECKHAM@daedalus the first advanced thing I read about natural language programming led me to believe that my natural language should be Pascal, not English. The first advanced thing I read about the practice and theory of law in the United States led me to believe that I should take up drinking.
DHeadshot's Alt@daedalus
Or tried to write Cobol...
Or tried to write Cobol...
CouncilsInExile@daedalus makes me think of Dijkstra’s comments https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html
@RevPancakes I'd not read that before. It's very good. "When all is said and told, the "naturalness" with which we use our native tongues boils down to the ease with which we can use them for making statements the nonsense of which is not obvious."
Dark Matter Zine@daedalus or programming. I learnt about “vibe coding”, shuddered (I’m aware of how badly a lot of people write let alone code) then discussed it with hubby (highly skilled ICT guy). He confirmed my assumptions and refrained from an epic rant.
I’ve also been reading legislation, cross-referencing with eg the National Construction Code etc. They might know what they mean but interpreting it is fraught.
I’ve also been reading legislation, cross-referencing with eg the National Construction Code etc. They might know what they mean but interpreting it is fraught.
Ben Curthoys
Nicolas Ward 
Andrew Leahey
Derek Martin
Timothy Wood@daedalus @siracusa In one case, Omni's head lawyer offered to resign from representing us when I gave him some feedback after catching a bug in a contract. Good guy, and we kept him. But as a CS/Math guy, lawyering stills seems inscrutable/pretending and failing to properly and concisely describe cause and effect.
Ylönën