What is Minsky talking about here?

[bennylava]

In the video I link below, Marvin Minsky talks about programs that could write some of their own code. The part I'm referring to starts at 23:53 in the video. For some reason I've always found that idea fascinating. But it seems that its pretty uncommon. Or is it? As someone who's still a newb I don't know, but my understanding was that its something that generally just doesn't happen. Programs don't write their own code, that's what programmers do. But he's saying in the late 50's and early 60's, there was a programming language that allowed for the programs to be able to code themselves (to what degree i don't know) and that "this made the computers more powerful". And then he say that C language is awful because it can't do this.

23:53

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIoddZ1NOVM

[Larz60+]

C language is awful because it can't do this

That's not accurate, and wasn't even back when C was invented in 1972
Most C compilers are written in C.

for python, see http://www.aosabook.org/en/500L/a-python...ython.html

[ichabod801]

Most C compilers are written in C.

That's not what Minsky is talking about. The C compilers were written by human programmers, not C programs. And they don't write new code, they transform the code that is already written by a human.

Minsky is talking about a computer program dynamically expanding its code in response to input received at run time.

[bennylava]

Yeah he was referring to a different language, and saying that C was "terrible" because it wouldn't sort of adapt and write its own code. At least that's what it sounds like to me. But then none of them do now, and he seemed to be lamenting that. Like it was some kind of big missed opportunity, which it sounds like it was. Be cool to know the names of those languages. He said there were two of them, and they were developed from 1955-1960 and lots of progress was made.

[ichabod801]

Well, I think the limitation is our ability to write an AI that could make use of that. I mean, if we had AI's that could write code, we would have a lot more tools to take the work out of programming for ourselves. And AI's writing AI code would be another step beyond that.

[ichabod801]

Another thought I had on this: a common technique these days is about putting code into data. If you do that, then you don't need a program that can modify it's own code, as long it can modify it's own data.

[bennylava]

Maybe he's just thinking about how far down that path we'd be by now, if they'd stuck with languages that can write a bit of their own coded when needed. Maybe it would make automation a whole lot... smarter.

But I thought that was the programmer's job. To sit there and add to the code, and test it and add more to it until finally it could allow for every possible contingency. (within reason as it pertains to what it was written for) Of course someone could come along and break it but I'm imagining it only being used for what it was intended for. So the programmer would decide what was a good use of the program, and if it needed some more code added in, in a later version, he'd do it. And not try to make the program do it itself. Almost sounds like a recipe for disaster. Cause what if a program running a robot arm, decided it needed to swing 6 inches wider and just added that tiny little bit of code in. So then it does it, and it knocks somebody's teeth out. Or something like that, I'm sure you can imagine.