Get the latest tech news

Malleable software in the age of LLMs (2023)

All computer users may soon have the ability to author small bits of code. What structural changes does this imply for the production and distribution of software?

As a preview of where this post is headed: I’ll argue that, while ChatGPT is far more capable than Siri, there are many tasks which aren’t well-served by a chat UI, for which we still need graphical user interfaces. LLMs seem to offer a promising way to more flexibly turn natural language into code, which then raises the question: what kinds of powerful computational media might be a good fit for this new situation? “Although these end-user programmers may not have the same goals as professional developers, they do face many of the same software engineering challenges, including understanding their requirements, as well as making decisions about design, reuse, integration, testing, and debugging.”

Get the Android app