> The spec and the tests become the source
Sufficiently precise spec is called code. It is the compiler story all over again.
Notably absent from the timeline is visual programming, or Rapid Application Development, think Visual Basic. It was all the rage in the 90s, and for some reason, we don't hear much about it today. We used to make fun of Visual Basic and the people using it back in the days, but the reality is that people with little skill could do something useful. Reminds you of something?
Honestly, I don't really understand why we write so much code today when a lot of use cases can be taken care of using templates and moving boxes into place, "low code" and "no code" never really seem to have taken off as much as they could have. That reliance on code was a boon for LLMs by the way, as text is the thing they have the easiest time working with.
My theory is that every project is unique in some way. As in, my CRUD has a little something that makes it different from other CRUD, and that's why it is valuable. You can't use an off the shelf component because no suitable component exists, and you want code because with code, you can express what you want with precision.
But it is also what limits AI. AI is very good at doing what other people did, but you don't want to do like everyone else, so you have to be very precise in what you are asking, and the most precise way of asking things is to write code.
However, when you really want what others did, then AI is really effective: rewrites, ports, decomp, etc... But this is not really programming, it is at best a translation job, and it will never be as good as the original. To make it better, you need to inject something unique, and for that, the best way to do it is with code. Like the translator of a novel who injects elements of his own culture that go beyond the work of the original author, to make up for what can't be literally translated.
