Big Yud and the Methods of Compilation
Big Yud and the Methods of Compilation
In today's episode, Yud tries to predict the future of computer science.
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Yud tried to describe a compiler, but ended up with a tulpa. I wonder why that keeps happening~
Yud would be horrified to learn about INTERCAL (WP, Esolangs), which has required syntax for politely asking the compiler to accept input. The compiler is expressly permitted to refuse inputs for being impolite or excessively polite.
I will not blame anybody for giving up on reading this wall of text. I had to try maybe four or five times, fighting the cringe. Most unrealistic part is having the TA know any better than the student. Yud is completely lacking in the light-hearted brevity that makes this sort of Broccoli Man & Panda Woman rant bearable.
I can somewhat sympathize, in the sense that there are currently multiple frameworks where Python code is intermixed with magic comments which are replaced with more code by ChatGPT during a compilation step. However, this is clearly a party trick which lacks the sheer reproducibility and predictability required for programming.
Y'know, I'll take his implicit wager. I bet that, in 2027, the typical CS student will still be taught with languages whose reference implementations use either:
- the classic 1970s-style workflow of parsing, tree transformation, and instruction selection; or
- the classic 1980s-style workflow of parsing, bytecode generation, and JIT.
I can somewhat sympathize, in the sense that there are currently multiple frameworks where Python code is intermixed with magic comments which are replaced with more code by ChatGPT during a compilation step. However, this is clearly a party trick which lacks the sheer reproducibility and predictability required for programming.
He probably just saw a github copilot demo on tiktok and took it personally.
@corbin You missed the best bit: one of the current INTERCAL compilers, CLC-INTERCAL (for a superset of the language which adds a bunch more insanity) is implemented IN INTERCAL! It's self-compiling. Also object-oriented, has quantum-indeterminate operators, and a computed COME FROM statement (also with quantum indeterminacy).
I think we should organize a fundraiser to pay CLC-INTERCAL's developer @Uilebheist to visit Yud and melt his brain.
Ow great you mentioning this has already had one sneerclubber have her brain leak out of her ears.
Have you learned nothing? YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT DANGEROUS IDEAS ... TREADKILL ;)
@MeiLin @cstross @corbin @Uilebheist What's so hard to understand? https://esolangs.org/wiki/Quantum_INTERCAL 🤣
@corbin it's a fucking _compiler_. What working or teaching programmer would accept "AI wrangling" in exchange for marginal improvements in the efficiency of the code that's output? Just chuck some more compute at it...
@corbin Probably still 5 years too soon but I would hope the 2027 CS student will be taught the usual engineering flow of specification, formal verification and safety analysis, design, some coding and what should be tiny bit of debug during validation at the end.
Reproducability is everything. If your binary isn't an exact match for the previous tested copy you are doing QA not production.
@corbin anyone looking for a two hour podcast about INTERCAL (and who ISN'T?) can find one here https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/064
Heh "2030 : Computer Science departments across the globe are moved from the Sciences to Politics as under-grads no longer program computers they negotiate with them"
He said lifting ideas from a couple of SciFi novels wholesale.