It’s the End of Computer Programming as We Know It. (And I Feel Fine.)

"I was 5 or 6 when I got my first sense of the joys of computer programming. This was in the early 1980s, when few people had a computer. One day, my dad brought home a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, one of the world’s early affordable, mass-market PCs. The device looked like a chunky keyboard; it had 48 kilobytes of memory (my phone has about 125,000 times as much RAM); and it used your TV as a display. Software, mainly games, came on cassette tapes that you loaded into the computer with a connection to a tape player — the floppy drive of its time.

But the games took forever to load, and while waiting I would often pore over the incredible programming manual that came with the Spectrum. The book was full of simple programs written in the accessible BASIC programming language. Most of it went over my head, but as I experimented with the examples, I began to feel the thrill that people who fall for computer programming often talk about — the revelation that, with just the right set of incantations, you can summon to life these otherwise inert machines and get them to do your bidding.

My obsession with programming deepened when I got to high school (I was very popular!), and there were a few weeks early in college when I thought coding could be something I did for a living. Of course, I didn’t stick with it; for me, writing words won out over writing code.

Though I did find it fascinating to learn to think the way computers do, there seemed to be something fundamentally backward about programming a computer that I just couldn’t get over: Wasn’t it odd that the machines needed us humans to learn their maddeningly precise secret languages to get the most out of them? If they’re so smart, shouldn’t they try to understand what we’re saying, rather than us learning how to talk to them?

Now that may finally be happening. In a kind of poetic irony, software engineering is looking like one of the fields that could be most thoroughly altered by the rise of artificial intelligence. Over the next few years, A.I. could transform computer programming from a rarefied, highly compensated occupation into a widely accessible skill that people can easily pick up and use as part of their jobs across a wide variety of fields. This won’t necessarily be terrible for computer programmers — the world will still need people with advanced coding skills — but it will be great for the rest of us. Computers that we can all “program,” computers that don’t require specialized training to adjust and improve their functionality and that don’t speak in code: That future is rapidly becoming the present.

A.I. tools based on large language models — like OpenAI Codex, from the company that brought you ChatGPT, or AlphaCode, from Google’s DeepMind division — have already begun to change the way many professional coders do their jobs. At the moment, these tools work mainly as assistants — they can find bugs, write explanations for snippets of poorly documented code and offer suggestions for code to perform routine tasks (not unlike how Gmail offers ideas for email replies — “Sounds good”; “Got it”).

But A.I. coders are quickly getting smart enough to rival human coders. Last year, DeepMind reported in the journal Science that when AlphaCode’s programs were evaluated against answers submitted by human participants in coding competitions, its performance “approximately corresponds to a novice programmer with a few months to a year of training.”

“Programming will be obsolete,” Matt Welsh, a former engineer at Google and Apple, predicted recently. Welsh now runs an A.I. start-up, but his prediction, while perhaps self-serving, doesn’t sound implausible:

I believe the conventional idea of “writing a program” is headed for extinction, and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by A.I. systems that are trained rather than programmed. In situations where one needs a “simple” program … those programs will, themselves, be generated by an A.I. rather than coded by hand.

Welsh’s argument, which ran earlier this year in the house organ of the Association for Computing Machinery, carried the headline “The End of Programming,” but there’s also a way in which A.I. could mark the beginning of a new kind of programming — one that doesn’t require us to learn code but instead transforms human-language instructions into software. An A.I. “doesn’t care how you program it — it will try to understand what you mean,” Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chip-making company Nvidia, said in a speech this week at the Computex conference in Taiwan.

He added: “We have closed the digital divide. Everyone is a programmer now — you just have to say something to the computer.”

Wait a second, though — wasn’t coding supposed to be one of the can’t-miss careers of the digital age? In the decades since I puttered around with my Spectrum, computer programming grew from a nerdy hobby into a vocational near-imperative, the one skill to acquire to survive technological dislocation, no matter how absurd or callous-sounding the advice. Joe Biden to coal miners: Learn to code! Twitter trolls to laid-off journalists: Learn to code! Tim Cook to French kids: Apprenez à programmer!

Programming might still be a worthwhile skill to learn, if only as an intellectual exercise, but it would have been silly to think of it as an endeavor insulated from the very automation it was enabling. Over much of the history of computing, coding has been on a path toward increasing simplicity. Once, only the small priesthood of scientists who understood binary bits of 1s or 0s could manipulate computers. Over time, from the development of assembly language through more human-readable languages like C and Python and Java, programming has climbed what computer scientists call increasing levels of abstraction — at each step growing more removed from the electronic guts of computing and more approachable to the people who use them.

A.I. might now be enabling the final layer of abstraction: the level on which you can tell a computer to do something the same way you’d tell another human.

So far, programmers seem to be on board with how A.I. is changing their jobs. GitHub, the coder’s repository owned by Microsoft, surveyed 2,000 programmers last year about how they’re using GitHub’s A.I. coding assistant, Copilot. A majority said Copilot helped them feel less frustrated and more fulfilled in their jobs; 88 percent said it improved their productivity. Researchers at Google found that among the company’s programmers, A.I. reduced “coding iteration time” by 6 percent.

I’ve tried to introduce my two kids to programming the way my dad did for me, but both found it a snooze. Their disinterest in coding has been one of my disappointments as a father, not to mention a source of anxiety that they could be out of step with the future. (I live in Silicon Valley, where kids seem to learn to code before they learn to read.) But now I’m a bit less worried. By the time they’re looking for careers, coding might be as antiquated as my first PC.”

Elektra varomi sunkvežimiai susiduria su degalų tiekimo dilema --- Technologijų pasidalijimo susitarimas tarp Toyota ir Daimler rodo, kad didelių įrenginių gamintojams prasideda brangesni laikai

„Jei manėte, kad perėjimas nuo benzininių variklių prie elektra varomų transporto priemonių yra sudėtingas, pavyzdžiui, „Ford“ ir „General Motors“, užjauskite sunkiųjų sunkvežimių gamintojus.

 

     Nors dauguma keleivinių transporto priemonių gamintojų vadovaujasi „Tesla“ keliu, naudodamos akumuliatorių technologiją, kad sumažintų anglies dvideginio išmetimą, jų kolegos didelių įrenginių versle žongliruoja keliomis galimybėmis. Be akumuliatorių, yra vandenilio kuro elementų ir net vidaus degimo variklių, kurie gali veikti, naudojant vandenilį. Kaip antradienį pabrėžė Freightliner savininko Daimler Truck vykdomasis direktorius Martinas Daumas, pramonė turi finansuoti šias papildomas technologijas be papildomų transporto priemonių pardavimo.

 

     Šia proga buvo surengta spaudos konferencija, skirta aptarti „Daimler“ susitarimą sujungti japonišką sunkvežimių prekės ženklą „Fuso“ su skandalo ištikta vietine „Hino“, kurią kontroliuoja „Toyota“. Įmonės daug kalbėjo apie poreikį sutelkti išteklius. „Fuso“ ir „Hino“ derins viską, išskyrus pardavimo operacijas, o „Daimler“ ir „Toyota“ taip pat bendradarbiaus, kurdamos ateities technologijas, ypač vandenilio.

 

     Sandoris gali būti įspėjimas investuotojams, kad sunkvežimių gamintojams, kurie tik pradeda didinti elektromobilių, naudojančių iš automobilių pramonės pasiskolintą akumuliatorių technologiją, technologiniai pokyčiai netrukus brangs. Didžiulės sumos skiriamos, kai automobilių įmonės veržiasi į akumuliatorių gamyklas, siekdamos keliamosios galios, sukūrė grėsmingą precedentą.

 

     Elektrinių sunkvežimių pardavimas vis dar labai mažas. Vasario mėn. Švedijos „Volvo“, tapęs pirmuoju rinkos lyderiu, nuo 2019 m., kai buvo pradėtas gaminti sunkusis elektromobilis, pardavė tik apie 4 300 sunkiųjų elektromobilių.

 

     Tačiau pardavimai turės didėti, kad būtų pasiekti agresyvūs reguliavimo tikslai. Pavyzdžiui, Kalifornijoje gamintojai turės parduoti konkrečias nulinės emisijos automobilių dalį, pradedant nuo ambicingų 9% 2024 metų modelio metais.

 

     Akumuliatorių technologija puikiai tinka vidutinės galios sunkvežimiams, kurie paskirsto prekes trumpesniais atstumais, tačiau geriausi sunkvežimių gamintojai vis tiek mano, kad vandenilis yra būtinas ilgo nuotolio produktams. Tarkime, norint įveikti daugiau, nei 600 mylių, sunkvežimiams prireiks arba didžiulio kiekio brangių, sunkių akumuliatorių, arba ilgų įkrovimo pertraukų, o tai gali kainuoti krovinių gabenimo įmonėms dėl prastovos. Teorinis vandenilio patrauklumas yra tas, kad jis yra lengvas ir, kaip ir dyzelinas, per 10–15 minučių gali būti įpilamas į sunkvežimį, kad jį būtų galima papildyti.

 

     Jei kas, tai nereikšmingas „Tesla“ sunkvežimio „Semi“ pristatymas padidino poreikį ne tik akumuliatoriams, bet ir kitiems dalykams. Bendrovė balandį pareiškė, kad produktas vis dar buvo „bandomasios gamybos“ ir, nepaisant pagrindinio pramonėje 500 mylių atstumo, neatskleidė išsamių specifikacijų. Panašu, kad jos paleidimo klientas „PepsiCo“ jį daugiausia naudoja, gabendamas neįprastai lengvus bulvių traškučių krovinius, pabrėždamas technologijos apribojimus.

 

     Tačiau vandenilį taip pat ilgą laiką stabdo kai kurie dideli praktiniai trūkumai, ypač degalų papildymo infrastruktūra. Vienas iš „Toyota“ ir „Daimler“ bendradarbiavimo tikslų – nustatyti degalų papildymo standartus, kad technologijoms netrukdytų konkuruojantys metodai. Vandenilis dažniausiai tiekiamas vamzdžiais, kaip slėginės dujos, tačiau naudojamas slėgis skiriasi, o kai kurios įmonės taip pat mato ilgalaikį potencialą jį suskystinti itin žemoje temperatūroje.

 

     „Daimler“ ir „Volvo“, kurie yra du didžiausi sunkvežimių gamintojai pasaulyje, abu vis dar bando vandenilinius sunkvežimius, siekdami pradėti masinę gamybą antroje dešimtmečio pusėje. Tikėtina, kad infrastruktūra pagerės: Europos Sąjunga neseniai užsibrėžė tikslą iki 2031 m. pagrindiniuose regiono magistraliniuose keliuose įrengti vandenilio degalinių kas 124 mylias. Akumuliatorių tiekimo grandinės kliūtys, padidėjus elektromobilių galiai, taip pat sustiprina argumentą, kad alternatyvios technologijos gali būti viena kitą papildančios, o ne konkurencingos.

 

     Viena intriguojančių laukinių kortų yra sunkvežimių įkrovimo infrastruktūros galimybė pakeisti automobilių verslą. „Kodėl tiesiog palikti tai sunkiasvoriams sunkvežimiams? sako Thomas Beckeris, BMW tvarumo ir mobilumo vadovas, kuris neseniai pradėjo kalbėti apie vandenilinių lengvųjų automobilių potencialą po to, kai anksčiau šis potencialas buvo Beckerio sumenkintas.

 

     Nepaisant to, kad kelių bėgių elektromobilių kelias atsiskleidžia sunkvežimiams, jis greičiausiai kainuos brangiai. Didelėse platformose sudėtingas technologijų perėjimas tik prasideda." [1]

 

1. EV Trucks Face a Fueling Dilemma --- Technology-sharing deal between Toyota and Daimler signals onset of costlier times for big-rig makers. Wilmot, Stephen. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 June 2023: B.12.

 

EV Trucks Face a Fueling Dilemma --- Technology-sharing deal between Toyota and Daimler signals onset of costlier times for big-rig makers.

"If you thought shifting from gas engines to electric vehicles was complex for the likes of Ford and General Motors, spare a thought for heavy-truck manufacturers.

Whereas most passenger-vehicle makers have followed Tesla down the single track of using battery technology to reduce carbon emissions, their peers in the big-rig business are juggling several options. Besides batteries, there are hydrogen fuel cells and even internal-combustion engines that might run on hydrogen. As Martin Daum, chief executive of Freightliner owner Daimler Truck, pointed out on Tuesday, the industry needs to fund these additional technologies without additional vehicle sales.

The occasion was a news conference to discuss Daimler's deal to merge its Japanese truck brand Fuso with scandal-struck local peer Hino, which is controlled by Toyota. The companies talked a lot about the need to pool resources. Fuso and Hino will combine everything except their sales operations, while Daimler and Toyota also will collaborate on future technologies, notably hydrogen.

The deal might be a warning to investors that technological change is about to get more expensive for truck manufacturers, which are only just starting to increase output of EVs using battery technology borrowed from the car industry. The vast sums car companies are plowing into battery factories to lift capacity set an ominous precedent.

Electric-truck sales are still very low. As of February, Sweden's Volvo, which has emerged as the early market leader, had sold only about 4,300 EVs since it started producing them in 2019. 

Yet sales will need to rise to meet aggressive regulatory targets. In California, for example, manufacturers will be required to sell specific shares of zero-emission vehicles, starting with an ambitious 9% for the 2024 model year.

Battery technology is a good fit for medium-duty trucks that distribute goods over shorter distances, but top truck makers still see hydrogen as necessary for long-range products. To cover more than 600 miles, say, trucks would need either huge quantities of expensive, heavy batteries or long recharging breaks, which might cost trucking companies money in downtime. The theoretical appeal of hydrogen is that it is light and, like diesel, could be piped into a truck in 10 to 15 minutes to refuel it.

If anything, the low-key launch of Tesla's Semi truck has reinforced the need for something other than batteries. The company said in April that the product was still in "pilot production" and, despite a headline industry-leading range of 500 miles, hasn't disclosed detailed specifications. Its launch customer, PepsiCo, mainly seems to use it to ship unusually light cargoes of potato chips, underlining the technology's limitations.

But hydrogen, too, has long been held back by some big practical weaknesses -- notably refueling infrastructure. One of the objectives of the collaboration between Toyota and Daimler is setting the standard for refueling so that the technology isn't hobbled by competing approaches. Hydrogen is usually piped as a gas under pressure, but the pressure used varies, and some companies also see longer-term potential in liquefying it at superlow temperatures.

Daimler and Volvo, which are the two largest truck manufacturers globally, are both still testing hydrogen trucks, with a view to starting mass production in the second half of the decade. Infrastructure is likely to improve: The European Union recently set a target of having hydrogen fueling stations every 124 miles along the region's key trunk routes by 2031. The snags in the battery supply chain as EV output has increased also lend weight to the argument that alternative technologies can be complementary rather than competitive.

One intriguing wild card is the potential for truck-charging infrastructure to change the car business. "Why just leave it to the heavy trucks?" says Thomas Becker, head of sustainability and mobility at BMW, which has recently started to talk up the potential of hydrogen cars after a period of playing them down.

However the multitrack EV path unfolds for trucks, it is likely to be costly. For big rigs, a challenging technology transition is only just beginning." [1]

1. EV Trucks Face a Fueling Dilemma --- Technology-sharing deal between Toyota and Daimler signals onset of costlier times for big-rig makers. Wilmot, Stephen. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 June 2023: B.12.