alt Hacker News> Sure. I wrote out specification that described the problem. It compiled that into a description of how to deal with it.
I might just not know enough compilers, but didn't you write the specification of how to approach the problem, not just the problem itself?
I don't think I knew how to approach the problem. There would have been no benefit in using the compiler if I did. Kind of like, if we want to talk about code, many coders don't know how to approach making a hashmap. They don't need to. The compiler figures it out for them, as it did me for my problems. I'd call the input I gave a specification of the problem, but words are in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
If we take "write the specification of how to approach the problem" at literal value, you might be narrowly thinking of a low-level compiler, or what sometimes gets called a transpiler? However, compilers encompass a much wider spectrum than that. Generally they enable users to operate at higher levels of abstraction.