3 ms·

THE CODE IS THAT LAYER. If your code does a shit job of capturing the requirements, no amount of markdown will improve your predicament until the code itself i

THE CODE IS THAT LAYER. If your code does a shit job of capturing the requirements, no amount of markdown will improve your predicament until the code itself is concise enough to be a spec. Of course you're free to ignore this advice. Lots of the world's code is spaghetti code. You're free to go that direction and reap the reward. Just don't expect to reach any further than mediocrity before your house of cards comes tumbling down, because it turns out "you don't need strong foundations to build tall things anymore" is just abjectly untrue

4b11b4 9mo ago
This is fundamentally flawed. Code cannot always capture the requirements, nor the reasoning or scenario which led to these requirements.
- conartist6 9mo ago
  Nevertheless, it captures what the system does. That makes it the true spec even if it's hard to read or figure out the intent behind. Writing an intent document is basically having a fap if the system doesn't do what you intend.
  - 4b11b4 9mo ago
    Well sure but the discussion isn't "is the code is correct".
    - conartist6 9mo ago
      Right it's whether your aspirations need to be grounded in reality. Do you actually need to build strong foundations, or can you just throw away all your work every time and start over from scratch? What confounds me is why I am on Hacker News having to defend the idea of software architecture being a kind of capital. That's not supposed to make some sort of countercultural revolutionary. Where did everyone go!!
      - conartist6 9mo ago
        Just to remind you what Paul Graham said when he defined what the "Hacker" in Hacker News means: > What and how should not be kept too separate. You're asking for trouble if you try to decide what to do without understanding how to do it. But hacking can certainly be more than just deciding how to implement some spec. At its best, it's creating the spec-- though it turns out the best way to do that is to implement it. https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

4b11b4 9mo ago

This is fundamentally flawed. Code cannot always capture the requirements, nor the reasoning or scenario which led to these requirements.

conartist6 9mo ago
Nevertheless, it captures what the system does. That makes it the true spec even if it's hard to read or figure out the intent behind. Writing an intent document is basically having a fap if the system doesn't do what you intend.
- 4b11b4 9mo ago
  Well sure but the discussion isn't "is the code is correct".
  - conartist6 9mo ago
    Right it's whether your aspirations need to be grounded in reality. Do you actually need to build strong foundations, or can you just throw away all your work every time and start over from scratch? What confounds me is why I am on Hacker News having to defend the idea of software architecture being a kind of capital. That's not supposed to make some sort of countercultural revolutionary. Where did everyone go!!
    - conartist6 9mo ago
      Just to remind you what Paul Graham said when he defined what the "Hacker" in Hacker News means: > What and how should not be kept too separate. You're asking for trouble if you try to decide what to do without understanding how to do it. But hacking can certainly be more than just deciding how to implement some spec. At its best, it's creating the spec-- though it turns out the best way to do that is to implement it. https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html https://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html