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The developer UX are the markdown files if no developer ever looks at the code. Whether you are tired of it or not, absolutely no one in your value you chain -

The developer UX are the markdown files if no developer ever looks at the code. Whether you are tired of it or not, absolutely no one in your value you chain - your customers who give your company money or your management chain cares about your code beyond does it meet the functional and non functional requirements - they never did. And of course whether it was done on time and on budget

sarchertech 8mo ago
[dead]
- raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
  AWS S3 by itself is made up of 300 microservices. Absolutely no developer at AWS knows how every line of code was written. The scalability requirements are part of the “non functional requirements”. I know that the vibe coded internal admin website will never be used by more than a dozen people just like I know the ETL implementation can scale to the required number of transactions because I actually tested it for that scalability. In fact, the one I gave to the client was my second attempt because my first one fell flat on its face when I ran it at the required scale
  - sarchertech 8mo ago
    I'm not talking about scalability requirements. I'm talking about the different workflows that 10 million people will come up with when they use a program that won't exist in any requirements docs.
    - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
      Do you think that AI coded implementations just magically get done witkoug requirements?
      - sarchertech 8mo ago
        You're not understanding what I'm saying. If you go tell your agents to add this new feature to an app, and you do it by writing up a new requirements doc. If you don't review the code, they will change a million different "implementation details" in order to add the new feature that will break workflows that aren't specified anywhere. The code is the spec. No natural language specification will ever full cover every behavior you care about in practice. No test suite will either. If you don't know this, you haven't maintained non-trivial software.
        raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
        And have you never seen what a overzealous developer can do and wreck havoc on an existing code base without a testing harness? Let a developer lose with something like Resharper which has existed since at least the mid 2000’s If your test don’t cover your use cases, you are just as much in danger from a new developer. It’s an issue with your testing methodology in either case. And there is also plan mode that you should be reviewing
        sarchertech 8mo ago
        Of course they can. Those kinds of developers cause problems constantly. It's one of the biggest reasons we have code reviews. Automated tests help too. But even with all of that we still have bugs and broken workflows. Now take that human and remove most of their ability to reason about how code changes affect non-local functionality and make them type 1000x faster. And don't have anyone review their code. The code is the spec, someone needs to be reviewing it.
datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
As a consumer of goods, I care quite a bit about many of the “hows” of those goods just as much as the “whats”. My home, which I own, for example, is very much a “what” that keeps me warm and dry. But the “how” of it was constructed is the difference between (1) me cursing the amateur and careless decision making of builders and (2) quietly sipping a cocktail on the beach, free of a care in the world. “How” doesn’t matter until it matters, like when you put too much weight onto that piece of particle board IKEA furniture.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
  Do you know how every nail was put into your house? Does the general contractor?
  - datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
    I know where they fucked up and cost me thousands of dollars due to cutting corners during build-out and poor architectural decisions during planning. These kinds of things become very obvious during destructive inspection, which is probably why there are so many limitations on warranties; I digress. He’s mildly controversial, but watch some @cyfyhomeinspections on YouTube to get a good idea of what you can infer of the “how” of building homes and how it affects homeowners. Especially relevant here because he seems to specialize in inspecting homes that are part of large developments where a single company builds out many homes very quickly and cuts tons of corners and makes the same mistakes repeatedly, kind of like LLM-generated code.
    - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
      So you’re saying that whether it’s humans or AI - when you delegate something to others you have no idea whether it’s producing quality without you checking yourself…
      - datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
        > you have no idea whether it’s producing quality without you checking yourself No, I can have some idea. For example, “brand perception”, which can be negatively impacted pretty heavily if things go south too often. See: GitHub, most recently. I mean, there are already companies that have a negative reputation regarding software quality due to significant outsourcing (consultancies), or bloated management (IBM), or whatever tf Oracle does. We don’t have to pretend there’s a universe where software quality matters, we already live in one. AI will just be one more way to tank your company’s reputation with regards to quality, even if you can maintain profitability otherwise through business development schemes.

sarchertech 8mo ago

[dead]

raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
AWS S3 by itself is made up of 300 microservices. Absolutely no developer at AWS knows how every line of code was written. The scalability requirements are part of the “non functional requirements”. I know that the vibe coded internal admin website will never be used by more than a dozen people just like I know the ETL implementation can scale to the required number of transactions because I actually tested it for that scalability. In fact, the one I gave to the client was my second attempt because my first one fell flat on its face when I ran it at the required scale
- sarchertech 8mo ago
  I'm not talking about scalability requirements. I'm talking about the different workflows that 10 million people will come up with when they use a program that won't exist in any requirements docs.
  - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
    Do you think that AI coded implementations just magically get done witkoug requirements?
    - sarchertech 8mo ago
      You're not understanding what I'm saying. If you go tell your agents to add this new feature to an app, and you do it by writing up a new requirements doc. If you don't review the code, they will change a million different "implementation details" in order to add the new feature that will break workflows that aren't specified anywhere. The code is the spec. No natural language specification will ever full cover every behavior you care about in practice. No test suite will either. If you don't know this, you haven't maintained non-trivial software.
      - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
        And have you never seen what a overzealous developer can do and wreck havoc on an existing code base without a testing harness? Let a developer lose with something like Resharper which has existed since at least the mid 2000’s If your test don’t cover your use cases, you are just as much in danger from a new developer. It’s an issue with your testing methodology in either case. And there is also plan mode that you should be reviewing
        sarchertech 8mo ago
        Of course they can. Those kinds of developers cause problems constantly. It's one of the biggest reasons we have code reviews. Automated tests help too. But even with all of that we still have bugs and broken workflows. Now take that human and remove most of their ability to reason about how code changes affect non-local functionality and make them type 1000x faster. And don't have anyone review their code. The code is the spec, someone needs to be reviewing it.

datsci_est_2015 8mo ago

As a consumer of goods, I care quite a bit about many of the “hows” of those goods just as much as the “whats”. My home, which I own, for example, is very much a “what” that keeps me warm and dry. But the “how” of it was constructed is the difference between (1) me cursing the amateur and careless decision making of builders and (2) quietly sipping a cocktail on the beach, free of a care in the world. “How” doesn’t matter until it matters, like when you put too much weight onto that piece of particle board IKEA furniture.

raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
Do you know how every nail was put into your house? Does the general contractor?
- datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
  I know where they fucked up and cost me thousands of dollars due to cutting corners during build-out and poor architectural decisions during planning. These kinds of things become very obvious during destructive inspection, which is probably why there are so many limitations on warranties; I digress. He’s mildly controversial, but watch some @cyfyhomeinspections on YouTube to get a good idea of what you can infer of the “how” of building homes and how it affects homeowners. Especially relevant here because he seems to specialize in inspecting homes that are part of large developments where a single company builds out many homes very quickly and cuts tons of corners and makes the same mistakes repeatedly, kind of like LLM-generated code.
  - raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
    So you’re saying that whether it’s humans or AI - when you delegate something to others you have no idea whether it’s producing quality without you checking yourself…
    - datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
      > you have no idea whether it’s producing quality without you checking yourself No, I can have some idea. For example, “brand perception”, which can be negatively impacted pretty heavily if things go south too often. See: GitHub, most recently. I mean, there are already companies that have a negative reputation regarding software quality due to significant outsourcing (consultancies), or bloated management (IBM), or whatever tf Oracle does. We don’t have to pretend there’s a universe where software quality matters, we already live in one. AI will just be one more way to tank your company’s reputation with regards to quality, even if you can maintain profitability otherwise through business development schemes.