Revisiting Dijkstra in the Age of Copilot and ChatGPT
Let's reflect on Dijkstra’s essay "On the foolishness of 'natural language programming" in light of modern natural language processing (NLP). Dijkstra was writing in 1978, long before modern NLP and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot ever existed. If we look at his concerns in light of today’s tech , here’s a balanced take: Where Dijkstra still has a point, and maybe always will: 1. Precision still matters. Computers are still literal. Even with fancy AI tools, they only do exactly what they’re told - which means vague instructions still wreck havoc . Think about the chaos in real-time and mission-critical systems. In real-world software development, bugs, edge cases, and unintended behaviors aren’t magically solved by NLP . Someone still got to get in the trenches and check - with a spotlight. 2. Natural language is still ambiguous. Even today, it's hard for machines to fully understand intent in complex situations. Misunderstandings can...