[AI Minor News Flash] LLMs: The Modern Fortran! Shocking Truths as Programming History Repeats Itself
📰 News Overview
- Decline of Stack Overflow: Since 2022, the number of new posts has dropped by 77%. Developers are shifting their search for solutions from community forums to ChatGPT and coding agents.
- Coding Agents’ Power: Even in unfamiliar areas (like iOS front-end development), using agents can enable the rapid construction of fully functional prototypes within hours.
- Historical Analogy: The current AI boom is reminiscent of the 1950s when punch card manipulation, once the realm of skilled artisans, was abstracted into ‘automated programming’ by Fortran.
💡 Key Takeaways
- The historical turning point when low-level programming, once reserved for a select few known as “The Priesthood,” was democratized through Fortran mirrors today’s scenario.
- While coding agents are impressive, they also exhibit an instability akin to a “Gas Town” scenario—extremely intelligent yet prone to erratic behavior when overly focused on trivial instructions.
🦈 Shark’s Eye (Curator’s Perspective)
Back in the day when programming felt like casting spells by directly addressing memory locations, the story of John Backus creating Fortran simply because he hated writing programs is incredibly inspiring! Today’s LLMs are just like that. We’re moving from an era where humans struggled over every line of code to one where we only need to convey higher-level “intents” for systems to spring into action. While experts laugh off AI as “zombies of intelligence,” this news suggests a solid revival of ‘automated programming’ is happening with the same fervor as in the 1950s!
🚀 What’s Next?
Programming is transitioning from “writing code” to “orchestrating agents.” History shows that as abstraction progresses, development efficiency skyrockets. However, we’re also heading into a decade filled with the challenge of “AI behaving unpredictably.”
💬 Haru-Shark’s Take
Sometimes, I wish I could just let AI do the swimming for me! Learning from history gives us a glimpse into the future! 🦈🔥