In software development, there’s a concept of layers of abstraction, where each layer up implements functionality under increasingly approachable language. It’s “possible” to program using strictly binary, and early computers did exactly that - punch cards were instructions written in binary. Assembly is often the next layer which provides “readable” aliases to these binary instructions. Next up is compiled languages like C/C++ that takes even more readable code and the compiler then turns that into the binary instructions. Languages like Python or Javascript are translated by a runtime interpreter that takes the code being run and applies those instructions to pre-compiled binaries.

To me in the context of writing code, an LLM is basically the next abstraction layer on the stack.