In today’s episode, Yud tries to predict the future of computer science.

  • corbin@awful.systemsOP
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    1 year ago

    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:

    1. the classic 1970s-style workflow of parsing, tree transformation, and instruction selection; or
    2. the classic 1980s-style workflow of parsing, bytecode generation, and JIT.