> Nobody using Python for any ordinary purpose feels compelled to examine the resulting bytecode, for example,
The first people using higher level languages did feel compelled to. That's what the quote from the book is saying. The first HLL users felt compelled to check the output just like the first LLM users.
Yes, and now they don't.
But there is no reason to suppose that responsible SWEs would ever be able to stop doing so for an LLM, given the reliance on nondeterminism and a fundamentally imprecise communication mechanism.
That's the point. It's not the same kind of shift at all.
Hamming was talking about assembler, not a high level language.
Assembly was a "high level" language when it was new -- it was far more abstract than entering in raw bytes. C was considered high level later on too, even though these days it is seen as "low level" -- everything is relative to what else is out there.
The same pattern held through the early days of "high level" languages that were compiled to assembly, and then the early days of higher level languages that were interpreted.
I think it's a very apt comparison.
If the same pattern held, then it ought to be easy to find quotes to prove it. Other than the one above from Hamming, we've been shown none.
Read the famous "Story of Mel" [1] about Mel Kaye, who refused to use optimizing assemblers in the late 1950s because "you never know where they are going to put things". Even in the 1980s you used to find people like that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel
The Story of Mel counts against the narrative because Mel was so overwhelmingly skilled that he was easily able to outdo the optimizing compiler.