5 ms·

I felt the same thing about the onboarding. Like what future are we trying to build for ourselves here, exactly? The kind where instead of sitting down with a c

by WD-42 1y ago

I felt the same thing about the onboarding. Like what future are we trying to build for ourselves here, exactly? The kind where instead of sitting down with a coworker to learn about a codebase, instead we get an ai generated PowerPoint to read alone???? Im so over this timeline.

JohnMakin 1y ago
all of this just reads like the supposed UML zeitgeist that was supposed to transform java and eliminate development 20 years ago if this is all ultimately java but with even more steps, its a sign im definitely getting old. it’s just the same pattern of non technical people deceiving themselves into believing they dont need to be technical to build tech and then ultimately resulting in again 10-20 years of re-learning the painful lessons of that. let me off this train too im tired already
- bigiain 1y ago
  20 years before UML/Java it was "4th Generation Languages" that were going to bring "Application Development Without Programmers" to businesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
  - throwawayoldie 1y ago
    And before that it was high-level programming languages, or as we call them today, programming languages.
  - xorcist 1y ago
    The 4GL was mostly reporting languages, as I remember. Useful ones, too. I still feel we haven't been even close to utilizing specialized programming languages and toolkits. Put another way, I am certain that Unity has done more to get non-programmers to develop software than ChatGPT ever will.
    - throwawayoldie 1y ago
      I'd argue first prize for that goes to Excel (for a sufficiently broad definition of "develop software").
- Agentlien 1y ago
  Of all the things I read at uni UML is the thing I've felt the least use for - even when designing new systems. I've had more use for things I never thought I'd need like Rayleigh scattering and processor design.
  - baq 1y ago
    UML was a buzzword, but a sequence diagram can sometimes replace a few hundred words of dry text. People think best in 2d.
    - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
      >People think best in 2d. no they don't. some people do. Some people think best in sentences, paragraphs, and sections of structured text. Diagrams mean next to nothing to me. Some graphs, as in representations of actual mathematical graphs, do have meaning though. If a graph is really the best data structure to describe a particular problem space. on edit: added in "representations of" as I worried people might misunderstand.
      - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
        oops, evidently I got downvoted because I don't think best in 2d and that is bad, classy as always HN.
      - TeMPOraL 1y ago
        FWIW, you're likely right here; not everyone is a visual thinker. Still, what both you and GP should be able to agree on, is that code - not pseudocode, simplified code, draft code, but actual code of a program - is one of the worst possible representations to be thinking and working in. It's dumb that we're still stuck with this paradigm; it's a great lead anchor chained to our ankles, preventing us from being able to handle complexity better.
        bryanrasmussen 1y ago
        ok, but my reference to sentences, paragraphs and sections would not indicate code but rather documentation.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  The mistake was going after programmers, instead of going after programming languages, where the actual problem is. UML may be ugly and in need of streamlining, but the idea of building software by creating and manipulating artifacts at the same conceptual level we are thinking at any given moment, is sound. Alas, we've long ago hit a wall in how much cross-cutting complexity we can stuff into the same piece of plaintext code, and we've been painfully scraping along the Pareto frontier ever since, vacillating between large and small functions and wasting time debating merits of sum types in lieu of exception handling, hoping that if we throw more CS PhDs into category theory blender, they'll eventually come up with some heavy duty super-mapping super monad that'll save us all. (I wrote a lot on it in in the past here; c.f. "pareto frontier" and "plaintext single source of truth codebase".) Unfortunately, it may be too late to fix it properly. Yes, LLMs are getting good enough to just translate between different perspectives/concerns on the fly, and doing the dirty work on the raw codebase for us. But they're also getting good enough that managers and non-technical people may finally get what they always wanted: building tech without being technical. For the first time ever, that goal is absolutely becoming realistic, and already possible in the small - that's what the whole "vibe coding" thing heralds.
  - WD-42 1y ago
    I’ve heard this many times before but I’ve never heard an argument that rebukes the plain fact that text is extremely expressive, and basically anything else we try to replace it with less so. And it happens that making a von Neumann machine do precisely what you want requires a high level of precision. Happy to understand otherwise!
    - pegasus 1y ago
      How so? Even just hypertext is more expressive than plain text. So is JSON, or any other data format or programming language which has a string type for that matter.
      - WD-42 1y ago
        Those are all still text.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > all of this just reads like the supposed UML zeitgeist that was supposed to transform java and eliminate development 20 years ago See also 'no-code', 4GLs, 5GLs, etc etc etc. Every decade or so, the marketers find a new thing that will destroy programming forever.
- fennecfoxy 1y ago
  Lmao I remember uni teaching me UML. Right before I dropped out after a year because fuck all of that. It's a shame because some of the final year content I probably would've liked. But I just couldn't handle it when I got into like COMP102 and in the first lecture, the lecturer is all "has anybody not used the internet before?" I spent my childhood doing the stuff so I just had to bail. I'm sure others would find it rewarding (particularly those that were in my classes because 'a computer job is a good job for money').
mjrbrennan 1y ago
Yes that's what gets me too. I want to engage with my coworkers, you know other humans? And get their ideas and input and summaries. Not just sit in my office alone having the computer explain everything to me badly, or read through Powerpoints of all things...
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  > I want to engage with my coworkers, you know other humans? I.e. the very species we try to limit our contact with, which is why we chose this particular field of work? Or are you from the generation that joined software for easy money? :). /s, but only partially. There are aspects of this work where to "engage with my coworkers" is to be doing the exact opposite of productive work.
crucialfelix 1y ago
Usually the tricks and problems in a codebase are not in the codebase at all, they are in somebody's head. It would be helpful if I had a long rambling dialogue with a chat model and it distilled that.
- dwringer 1y ago
  > It would be helpful if I had a long rambling dialogue with a chat model and it distilled that. IME this can work pretty well with Gemini in the web UI. If it misinterprets you at any stage you can edit your last comment until it gets on the same page, so to speak. Then once you're to a point in the conversation where you're satisfied it seems to "get it", you can drop in some more directly relevant context like example code if needed and ask for what you want.
CuriouslyC 1y ago
Naw, the new future (technically the present for orgs that use AI intelligently) is: The AI already generated comprehensive README.md files and detailed module/function/variable (as needed) doc comments, which you could read but end up mostly being consumed by another AI, so you can just tell it what you're trying to do and ask it how you might accomplish that in the codebase, first at a conceptual level, then in code once you feel comfortable enough with the system to be able to validate the work. All the while you're sitting next to another coworker who's also doing the same thing, while you talk about high level architecture stuff, make jokes, and generally have a good time. Shit, I don't even mind open offices as much as I used to, because you don't need that intense focus to get into a groove to produce code quickly like you did when manually writing it, so you can actually have conversations with an entire table of coworkers and still be super productive. No comment on the political/climate side of this timeline, but the AI part is pretty good when you master it.
- mvieira38 1y ago
  What kind of stuff are you building where that is even remotely possible? I get that generating documentation works fine, but building features just isn't there yet for non-trivial apps, and don't even get me started on trying to get the agents to backtrack and change something they did
  - cloverich 1y ago
    I have them backtrack all the time, including rewriting models and underlying db, then reworking from the ground up. Another approach is Ill dictate how an api SHOULD work, or even go nuclear and write code i want to work, and tell the they must make the test pass and cant change what i wrote. They take these constraints well ime.

by WD-42 1y ago

JohnMakin 1y ago

all of this just reads like the supposed UML zeitgeist that was supposed to transform java and eliminate development 20 years ago if this is all ultimately java but with even more steps, its a sign im definitely getting old. it’s just the same pattern of non technical people deceiving themselves into believing they dont need to be technical to build tech and then ultimately resulting in again 10-20 years of re-learning the painful lessons of that. let me off this train too im tired already

bigiain 1y ago
20 years before UML/Java it was "4th Generation Languages" that were going to bring "Application Development Without Programmers" to businesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
- throwawayoldie 1y ago
  And before that it was high-level programming languages, or as we call them today, programming languages.
- xorcist 1y ago
  The 4GL was mostly reporting languages, as I remember. Useful ones, too. I still feel we haven't been even close to utilizing specialized programming languages and toolkits. Put another way, I am certain that Unity has done more to get non-programmers to develop software than ChatGPT ever will.
  - throwawayoldie 1y ago
    I'd argue first prize for that goes to Excel (for a sufficiently broad definition of "develop software").
Agentlien 1y ago
Of all the things I read at uni UML is the thing I've felt the least use for - even when designing new systems. I've had more use for things I never thought I'd need like Rayleigh scattering and processor design.
- baq 1y ago
  UML was a buzzword, but a sequence diagram can sometimes replace a few hundred words of dry text. People think best in 2d.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    >People think best in 2d. no they don't. some people do. Some people think best in sentences, paragraphs, and sections of structured text. Diagrams mean next to nothing to me. Some graphs, as in representations of actual mathematical graphs, do have meaning though. If a graph is really the best data structure to describe a particular problem space. on edit: added in "representations of" as I worried people might misunderstand.
    - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
      oops, evidently I got downvoted because I don't think best in 2d and that is bad, classy as always HN.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      FWIW, you're likely right here; not everyone is a visual thinker. Still, what both you and GP should be able to agree on, is that code - not pseudocode, simplified code, draft code, but actual code of a program - is one of the worst possible representations to be thinking and working in. It's dumb that we're still stuck with this paradigm; it's a great lead anchor chained to our ankles, preventing us from being able to handle complexity better.
      - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
        ok, but my reference to sentences, paragraphs and sections would not indicate code but rather documentation.
TeMPOraL 1y ago
The mistake was going after programmers, instead of going after programming languages, where the actual problem is. UML may be ugly and in need of streamlining, but the idea of building software by creating and manipulating artifacts at the same conceptual level we are thinking at any given moment, is sound. Alas, we've long ago hit a wall in how much cross-cutting complexity we can stuff into the same piece of plaintext code, and we've been painfully scraping along the Pareto frontier ever since, vacillating between large and small functions and wasting time debating merits of sum types in lieu of exception handling, hoping that if we throw more CS PhDs into category theory blender, they'll eventually come up with some heavy duty super-mapping super monad that'll save us all. (I wrote a lot on it in in the past here; c.f. "pareto frontier" and "plaintext single source of truth codebase".) Unfortunately, it may be too late to fix it properly. Yes, LLMs are getting good enough to just translate between different perspectives/concerns on the fly, and doing the dirty work on the raw codebase for us. But they're also getting good enough that managers and non-technical people may finally get what they always wanted: building tech without being technical. For the first time ever, that goal is absolutely becoming realistic, and already possible in the small - that's what the whole "vibe coding" thing heralds.
- WD-42 1y ago
  I’ve heard this many times before but I’ve never heard an argument that rebukes the plain fact that text is extremely expressive, and basically anything else we try to replace it with less so. And it happens that making a von Neumann machine do precisely what you want requires a high level of precision. Happy to understand otherwise!
  - pegasus 1y ago
    How so? Even just hypertext is more expressive than plain text. So is JSON, or any other data format or programming language which has a string type for that matter.
    - WD-42 1y ago
      Those are all still text.
rsynnott 1y ago
> all of this just reads like the supposed UML zeitgeist that was supposed to transform java and eliminate development 20 years ago See also 'no-code', 4GLs, 5GLs, etc etc etc. Every decade or so, the marketers find a new thing that will destroy programming forever.
fennecfoxy 1y ago
Lmao I remember uni teaching me UML. Right before I dropped out after a year because fuck all of that. It's a shame because some of the final year content I probably would've liked. But I just couldn't handle it when I got into like COMP102 and in the first lecture, the lecturer is all "has anybody not used the internet before?" I spent my childhood doing the stuff so I just had to bail. I'm sure others would find it rewarding (particularly those that were in my classes because 'a computer job is a good job for money').

mjrbrennan 1y ago

Yes that's what gets me too. I want to engage with my coworkers, you know other humans? And get their ideas and input and summaries. Not just sit in my office alone having the computer explain everything to me badly, or read through Powerpoints of all things...

TeMPOraL 1y ago
> I want to engage with my coworkers, you know other humans? I.e. the very species we try to limit our contact with, which is why we chose this particular field of work? Or are you from the generation that joined software for easy money? :). /s, but only partially. There are aspects of this work where to "engage with my coworkers" is to be doing the exact opposite of productive work.

crucialfelix 1y ago

Usually the tricks and problems in a codebase are not in the codebase at all, they are in somebody's head. It would be helpful if I had a long rambling dialogue with a chat model and it distilled that.

dwringer 1y ago
> It would be helpful if I had a long rambling dialogue with a chat model and it distilled that. IME this can work pretty well with Gemini in the web UI. If it misinterprets you at any stage you can edit your last comment until it gets on the same page, so to speak. Then once you're to a point in the conversation where you're satisfied it seems to "get it", you can drop in some more directly relevant context like example code if needed and ask for what you want.

CuriouslyC 1y ago

Naw, the new future (technically the present for orgs that use AI intelligently) is: The AI already generated comprehensive README.md files and detailed module/function/variable (as needed) doc comments, which you could read but end up mostly being consumed by another AI, so you can just tell it what you're trying to do and ask it how you might accomplish that in the codebase, first at a conceptual level, then in code once you feel comfortable enough with the system to be able to validate the work. All the while you're sitting next to another coworker who's also doing the same thing, while you talk about high level architecture stuff, make jokes, and generally have a good time. Shit, I don't even mind open offices as much as I used to, because you don't need that intense focus to get into a groove to produce code quickly like you did when manually writing it, so you can actually have conversations with an entire table of coworkers and still be super productive. No comment on the political/climate side of this timeline, but the AI part is pretty good when you master it.

mvieira38 1y ago
What kind of stuff are you building where that is even remotely possible? I get that generating documentation works fine, but building features just isn't there yet for non-trivial apps, and don't even get me started on trying to get the agents to backtrack and change something they did
- cloverich 1y ago
  I have them backtrack all the time, including rewriting models and underlying db, then reworking from the ground up. Another approach is Ill dictate how an api SHOULD work, or even go nuclear and write code i want to work, and tell the they must make the test pass and cant change what i wrote. They take these constraints well ime.