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Automatic Programming vs. Artificial Intelligence

Published: 10 July 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Ever since we began programming in the 1950s, there have been two diametrically opposed tendencies within computer science and software engineering: on the left side of the Glorious Throne of Alan Turing, the tendency to perfect the Art of Computer Programming, and on the right side, the tendency to end it. These tendencies can be seen from the Manchester Mark I's "autocode" removing the need for programmers shortly after WW2; COBOL being a language that could be "read by the management"; to contemporary "no-code" development environments; and the idea that large language models herald "The End of Programming". This vision paper looks at what AI will not change about software systems, and the people who must use them, and necessarily must build them. Rather than neglecting 50 years of history, theory, and practice, and assuming programming can, will, and should be ended by AI, we speculate on how AI has, already does, and will continue to perfect one of the peak activities of being human: programming.

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cover image ACM Conferences
AIware 2024: Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Conference on AI-Powered Software
July 2024
182 pages
ISBN:9798400706851
DOI:10.1145/3664646
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 10 July 2024

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  1. AIware
  2. Artificial Intelligence
  3. Programming
  4. Software Engineering
  5. Vapeware
  6. Vapourware

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