Really the possibilities are endless, the main thing I’m expecting in the not to distant future is a polished system that can given a description of what it should create including performance characteristics and such produce the whole thing including tests test descriptions, performance tests and interface documentation etc etc basically ready to run in a large scale real world situation exposed to the interwebs.

Looking at the progress being made I’d expect this to arrive before 2030 putting a lot of people out of work real fast.

I don’t mind the idea of fixing obvious syntax errors, but even spelling correction for identifiers is risky, and many if not most of production errors arise due to deep problems with my algorithm or assumptions. I’m terrified of an LLM trying to fix database write issues without a human in the loop.

Yeah, check out CodiumAI, which has a chatbot that suggests tests and points out weak spots as you write the code. They said an AI agent that reviews code and suggests PRs is something they hope to see in the near future.

Great point. We have a podcast coming out tomorrow with the PM leading up Google’s Duet coding assistant. He makes the point that right now AI can be helpful for making suggestions or acting as a kind of autonomous linter or PR helper, but that it doesn’t currently have the capability to replace humans or be trusted to work without the typical human in the loop SDLC. For the moment, seems like it’s augmenting what developers and teams can do, not replacing them.

For those who are interested in trying self-healing code by yourself, there is one open source tool ESBMC-AI that is publicly available https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.14752.pdf

ESBMC-AI features an efficient software verification method for boosting the success rate when using an LLM to `heal’ the code.

It could save us developers so much time and improve the overall reliability of our applications. However, I am concerned about potential risks and the impact on code quality.

Striking a balance between automation and manual intervention will be crucial to ensure the integrity of our systems. Nevertheless, I’m optimistic about the possibilities that self-healing code brings. Great read!

Rather at this rate, LLMs will merely “learn” that the most likely solution to enact delegation for someone else to do it.
Considering every professional programmer in the world is objectively bad at their job (because they still have their job and they created LLMs to their image of poor performance), AI will simply be another agent in the loop.