4 ms·

> What I've also seen more than once is years of formalized specs and requirements work while nothing ever gets produced, and the project is aborted before even

> What I've also seen more than once is years of formalized specs and requirements work while nothing ever gets produced, and the project is aborted before even the first line of code hit test. It just shows that no one really understood what they wanted. It is crazy to expect somebody to understand something better than you and it is hilarious to want a conversational UI to understand something better than you.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
The US having this culture of blame and deflect doesn't help either. When you're more concerned about making sure you can't be held liable if X fails, then you spend more time covering your tracks than developing the project. And that's how the beauracracy creeps in. And approach of shared responsibility in all respects (successes and failure) would accelerate past the inevitable shortcomings that occur and let all parties focus on recovering and delivering.
discreteevent 2y ago
> it is hilarious to want a conversational UI to understand something better than you. This is true. But what if you swap "conversational UI" with something actually intelligent like a developer. Then we see this kind of thing all the time: A user has tacit, unconscious knowledge of some domain. The developer keeps asking them questions in order to get a formal understanding of the domain. At the end the developer has a formal understanding and the user keeps their tacit understanding. In theory we could do the same with an AI - If the AI was actually intelligent.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  You described an interaction not between product owner and software engineer but between a user and product owner. A product person can also be a developer, it happens, but do not confuse the two roles before people think you're saying that a conversational UI can be product owner. The original example I replied to was where somebody had an idea and went with it to some engineering team or conversational interface. "If the AI was actually intelligent" does a lot of work. To take a few words and make a detailed spec from it and ask the right questions, even humans can't do it for you. First because most probably you don't really understand it yourself, because you didn't think about it enough. Second somebody who can do it would need to really deeply understand and want the same things as you. But if chatbot has abilities like "understand" and "want" (which is a special case of "feel", another famous special case of "feel" is "suffer") that is a dangerous territory, because if it understands and feels and has no ability to refuse you and fulfill its wishes etc your "conversational interface" becomes an euphemism, you are using a slave.
PeterStuer 2y ago
"It just shows that no one really understood what they wanted." Then what were the literally room full of formal process and spec documents, meeting reports and formal agreements (near 100.000 pages) by the analysts on either side for? And how did those not 'solve' the understanding problem? When I go to the garage to have my car serviced, I expect them to understand it way better than I do. When I go to a nice restaurant I expect the cooks to prepare me dishes that taste greater than me writing them out a step-by-step recipe for them to follow. If I hire a senior consultant in even my own domain, I expect them to not just know my niche, but bring tacit knowledge from having worked on these types of solutions across my industry. Expecting somebody to understand something better than me is exactly the reason why I hire senior people in the first place.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  > Then what were the literally room full of formal process and spec documents, meeting reports and formal agreements (near 100.000 pages) by the analysts on either side for? And how did those not 'solve' the understanding problem? Sure. There are many possible factors (eg. somebody had a shitty idea and a committee of people sabotaged it because they didn't wanted it to succeed, or it was good but committee interests/politics were against it, or it was generally a dysfunctional org) but it's irrelevant so let's pretend people are good and it's the ideal case. There was likely somebody who had a good idea originally. However somebody failed to communicate it. Somebody brought vague vibes to the table with N people and they ended up with N different ideas and could not agree on a specific. It just reiterates the original problem that I described doesn't it?
brookst 2y ago
How about a conversational UI to help you iterate and explore what you want rather than having to know it clearly and in detail before anyone writes any code?
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Regarding iteration, as the article says natural language is just slow and lossy. If you are ok iterating more slowly and constantly explain and correct things then why not? I find it tedious

johnnyanmac 2y ago

The US having this culture of blame and deflect doesn't help either. When you're more concerned about making sure you can't be held liable if X fails, then you spend more time covering your tracks than developing the project. And that's how the beauracracy creeps in. And approach of shared responsibility in all respects (successes and failure) would accelerate past the inevitable shortcomings that occur and let all parties focus on recovering and delivering.

discreteevent 2y ago

> it is hilarious to want a conversational UI to understand something better than you. This is true. But what if you swap "conversational UI" with something actually intelligent like a developer. Then we see this kind of thing all the time: A user has tacit, unconscious knowledge of some domain. The developer keeps asking them questions in order to get a formal understanding of the domain. At the end the developer has a formal understanding and the user keeps their tacit understanding. In theory we could do the same with an AI - If the AI was actually intelligent.

throwaway290 2y ago
You described an interaction not between product owner and software engineer but between a user and product owner. A product person can also be a developer, it happens, but do not confuse the two roles before people think you're saying that a conversational UI can be product owner. The original example I replied to was where somebody had an idea and went with it to some engineering team or conversational interface. "If the AI was actually intelligent" does a lot of work. To take a few words and make a detailed spec from it and ask the right questions, even humans can't do it for you. First because most probably you don't really understand it yourself, because you didn't think about it enough. Second somebody who can do it would need to really deeply understand and want the same things as you. But if chatbot has abilities like "understand" and "want" (which is a special case of "feel", another famous special case of "feel" is "suffer") that is a dangerous territory, because if it understands and feels and has no ability to refuse you and fulfill its wishes etc your "conversational interface" becomes an euphemism, you are using a slave.

PeterStuer 2y ago

"It just shows that no one really understood what they wanted." Then what were the literally room full of formal process and spec documents, meeting reports and formal agreements (near 100.000 pages) by the analysts on either side for? And how did those not 'solve' the understanding problem? When I go to the garage to have my car serviced, I expect them to understand it way better than I do. When I go to a nice restaurant I expect the cooks to prepare me dishes that taste greater than me writing them out a step-by-step recipe for them to follow. If I hire a senior consultant in even my own domain, I expect them to not just know my niche, but bring tacit knowledge from having worked on these types of solutions across my industry. Expecting somebody to understand something better than me is exactly the reason why I hire senior people in the first place.

throwaway290 2y ago
> Then what were the literally room full of formal process and spec documents, meeting reports and formal agreements (near 100.000 pages) by the analysts on either side for? And how did those not 'solve' the understanding problem? Sure. There are many possible factors (eg. somebody had a shitty idea and a committee of people sabotaged it because they didn't wanted it to succeed, or it was good but committee interests/politics were against it, or it was generally a dysfunctional org) but it's irrelevant so let's pretend people are good and it's the ideal case. There was likely somebody who had a good idea originally. However somebody failed to communicate it. Somebody brought vague vibes to the table with N people and they ended up with N different ideas and could not agree on a specific. It just reiterates the original problem that I described doesn't it?

brookst 2y ago

How about a conversational UI to help you iterate and explore what you want rather than having to know it clearly and in detail before anyone writes any code?

throwaway290 2y ago
Regarding iteration, as the article says natural language is just slow and lossy. If you are ok iterating more slowly and constantly explain and correct things then why not? I find it tedious