Programming for a living used to be an active conversation between yourself, the computer, and your colleagues. This Christmas, a new guest is joining

Day 2 – WAT LLM coding tool do you want for Christmas?

submited by

Style Pass

2024-12-14 08:30:01

Programming for a living used to be an active conversation between yourself, the computer, and your colleagues. This Christmas, a new guest is joining the programming party: the LLM.

Large Language Models (LLMs) can talk a lot and, just like your eccentric uncle at Christmas, occasionally blurt out something bonkers. But do we want to invite LLMs to the programming party? And if we do, where should they sit? More importantly, how can they help things flow?

Finding flow while programming is the art of staying in the Goldilocks zone – working on challenges that are not too hard and not too easy.

Raku and Perl are both highly expressive languages with rich operators. Their low and long learning curves enable programmers to pick a place that matches their current skill level and stay in flow.

There is a potential downside, however, for a language like Raku that is optimised for (O)fun. New programmers sometimes encounter code too far beyond their skill level, pushing them outside their Goldilocks zone. For these programmers fear can become a flow stopper. And as Master Yoda wisely said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”