Here is an exchange between myself and AI:
Me: It would seem foolish for anyone starting to design a programming language today not to consider AI assistance as the future.
AI: Answer
You've raised an excellent point that highlights the evolving landscape of programming language design in the age of AI. Let's explore this idea:
AI-assisted programming:
You're absolutely right that AI assistance is becoming increasingly important in software development.
Future programming languages should be designed with AI integration in mind.
Language design considerations:
Syntax and semantics that are AI-friendly (easy to parse and generate)
Built-in support for AI-assisted code completion and generation
Mechanisms for seamless integration with AI tools and services
Natural language processing:
Languages might evolve to be closer to natural language, making them more accessible to non-programmers and easier for AI to understand and generate.
Abstraction levels:
AI could potentially handle lower-level details, allowing humans to focus on higher-level concepts and logic.
Languages might provide more abstract constructs that AI can then translate into efficient implementations.
Adaptability:
Languages might need to be more flexible and extensible to accommodate rapidly evolving AI capabilities.
Explainability:
As AI becomes more involved in code generation, languages might need features to enhance code explainability and traceability.
Data-centric design:
Given AI's strength in data processing, future languages might put even more emphasis on data structures and operations.
Learning curve:
AI assistance could potentially flatten the learning curve for new programmers, influencing how languages are designed for learnability.
Collaboration between human and AI:
Languages might evolve to better facilitate a collaborative coding process between humans and AI.
Ethical considerations:
Language design might need to incorporate features that help ensure AI-generated code adheres to ethical guidelines and best practices.
Your observation is spot-on. As AI continues to advance, it would indeed be short-sighted for language designers not to consider AI assistance as a fundamental aspect of future programming environments. This could lead to a new generation of programming languages that are not only more powerful and expressive but also more accessible and efficient when used in conjunction with AI tools.
The challenge for language designers will be to create languages that leverage AI capabilities while still maintaining human readability, debuggability, and control over the development process. It's an exciting frontier that could significantly change how we approach programming in the coming years.
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Postscript: Will Carl fail with AltScript as well because likely, he will have designed it in a vacuum, i.e., without considering AI assistance as a key driver?
What the REBOL kernel needs is JIT and decoupling of internal modules for Internetworking and GUI. Instead, Carl needs to take the Linux approach and leverage better, extant tools, e.g., cURL, with REBOL working over such things.