bstempleton (05/02/83)
I hope the person who stated that this self programming computer project will eliminate the need for programmers is not on the AI project. If so they should fire him/her and get somebody who is a good programmer. Programming is a highly creative art that uses some highly complex technological tools. No AI project will put a good programmer out of a job without being able to pass a Turing test first. This is because a good programmer spends more time designing than coding. In fact, I would be all for a machine which I could tell to write a program to traverse a data structure doing this and that to it. It would get rid of all the tedious stuff, and I would be able to produce all kinds of wonderful programs. Out of a job? Hardly - I'd be rich, and so would a lot of other people, notably those on AI projects. I doubt that ten years will show a computer that can do things like design (or invent) things like screen editors, VisiCalc(TM), relational databases and compilers. If it could do all that, it's intelligent - not just a self-programming machine.