alt Hacker NewsThe important difference is the reduction in boilerplate, which allows programs to be written with (often) significantly less code. Hence the time savings (and fun) spoken of in the original article.
This isn't really a new phenomenon. Languages have been adding things like arrays and maps as builtins to reduce the boilerplate required around them. The modern languages of which we speak take that same idea to a whole new level, but such is the nature of evolution.
No, when we write code it has a an absolute and specific meaning to the compiler. When we write words to an LLM they are written in a non-specific informal language (usually English) and processed non-deterministically too. This is an incredibly important distinction that makes coding, and asking the LLM to code, two completely different ball games. One is formal, one is not.
And yes, this isn’t a new phenomenon.