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It doesn’t matter what materials or techniques you use to build a house. 99.99% of construction exists to achieve business outcomes, and velocity matters a lot

It doesn’t matter what materials or techniques you use to build a house. 99.99% of construction exists to achieve business outcomes, and velocity matters a lot more than using the right materials or techniques. Of course the house must pass safety inspections and stuff, but the materials and techniques don’t matter one bit for that. All that matters is you achieve the desired outcome, and I will ignore the glaring fact that you achieve the desired outcome by using the right materials and techniques. The materials and techniques don’t matter, just the outcome.

estearum 4mo ago
No the materials and techniques matter a lot. This is why we need to build houses with sticks and jute cord, just like we always have. It's vital also that we paint our special symbols above the door to ward off the spirits. It's insane to me that you're implying we could build houses with pre-fabricated materials or pneumatic nail guns and still somehow "have houses?" No sticks/jute cord and special symbols, then no house.
- slopinthebag 4mo ago
  The argument isn’t to not use better materials or techniques, it’s that inferior materials and techniques are fine because they don’t impact the end result, which is so obviously false when it comes to pretty much anything, but supposedly true when it comes to software.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    I'm not sure who you saw arguing for inferior materials and techniques, but let me know when you find them. What you saw in this thread was someone arguing against the dimensions of "impressiveness" and "crassness" as valid things to care about when it comes to code. It's your mistake to assume that those are related to any meaningful concept of actual quality.
    - dofm 4mo ago
      FWIW I never suggested that they were indicative of problems with the code. Unimpressive, crass code can run, after all. I clearly said elsewhere that I think they are predictive of problems with the person who writes it, and I fear I can generalise that to LLM tooling that generates it.
yoyohello13 4mo ago
> Of course the house must pass safety inspections and stuff, but the materials and techniques don’t matter one bit for that. All that matters is you achieve the desired outcome, and I will ignore the glaring fact that you achieve the desired outcome by using the right materials and techniques. This analogy is more true than you think. This is why modern homes/appartments are trash. You can pass safety inspections using subpar materials and the house will fall apart after a few years, but who cares right? At least you achieved the business outcome! This mentality is so infuriating. This is why I need to buy new shoes every year. Or why my washer/dryer motherboard craps out in 2 years instead of 10. Nobody gives a shit about quality anymore, this is why society is crumbling around us. Profit driven incentive for fast/cheap over everything else. And now I need to spend my day prompting an AI to fix AI slop code to keep the business hobbling along another day. What a fucking joke.
- dofm 4mo ago
  It does feel like a good analogy. e.g. the bill is definitely coming true for a lot of "non-traditional construction" materials and methods in immediately post-war properties in the UK. There are many unmortgageable properties using Mundic Block in Cornwall and to some extend Devon, in the heavily bombed south east there was a lot of pre-stressed concrete with catastrophic rebar failure, not to mention Orlit construction, and all across the country a lot of RAAC. Almost all of it for good, necessary, upbeat reasons. It feels a bit like this kind of crisis from AI generated code could hit in ten, fifteen years time; people often fail to understand how long a bit of website code can last.
- slopinthebag 4mo ago
  Yeah I agree. And you have people on this forum who gleefully point out that quality doesn’t matter to the business, as if they think they’re so intelligent because they noticed that employees are there to make the company money. Not realizing that A) it’s a very antisocial attitude and B) it’s not a tenable long term strategy.
  - estearum 4mo ago
    Hang on now. GP didn't say "I care about quality" and I didn't say caring about quality is wrong. GP said Claude's code "doesn't impress" them and that it's "crass." Do you think a valid "long term strategy" is to create code that impresses GP and is not crass, but doesn't achieve the business outcomes it's meant to? Inversely, do you think one can achieve business outcomes if "quality" is so abysmal that the code doesn't work or is unmaintainable? Is it possible to write perfectly good, maintainable, performant, legible code that "doesn't impress" GP, or feels "crass" to them? Well gee, probably! Because "impressiveness" and "crassness" are literally meaningless.

estearum 4mo ago

No the materials and techniques matter a lot. This is why we need to build houses with sticks and jute cord, just like we always have. It's vital also that we paint our special symbols above the door to ward off the spirits. It's insane to me that you're implying we could build houses with pre-fabricated materials or pneumatic nail guns and still somehow "have houses?" No sticks/jute cord and special symbols, then no house.

slopinthebag 4mo ago
The argument isn’t to not use better materials or techniques, it’s that inferior materials and techniques are fine because they don’t impact the end result, which is so obviously false when it comes to pretty much anything, but supposedly true when it comes to software.
- estearum 4mo ago
  I'm not sure who you saw arguing for inferior materials and techniques, but let me know when you find them. What you saw in this thread was someone arguing against the dimensions of "impressiveness" and "crassness" as valid things to care about when it comes to code. It's your mistake to assume that those are related to any meaningful concept of actual quality.
  - dofm 4mo ago
    FWIW I never suggested that they were indicative of problems with the code. Unimpressive, crass code can run, after all. I clearly said elsewhere that I think they are predictive of problems with the person who writes it, and I fear I can generalise that to LLM tooling that generates it.

yoyohello13 4mo ago

> Of course the house must pass safety inspections and stuff, but the materials and techniques don’t matter one bit for that. All that matters is you achieve the desired outcome, and I will ignore the glaring fact that you achieve the desired outcome by using the right materials and techniques. This analogy is more true than you think. This is why modern homes/appartments are trash. You can pass safety inspections using subpar materials and the house will fall apart after a few years, but who cares right? At least you achieved the business outcome! This mentality is so infuriating. This is why I need to buy new shoes every year. Or why my washer/dryer motherboard craps out in 2 years instead of 10. Nobody gives a shit about quality anymore, this is why society is crumbling around us. Profit driven incentive for fast/cheap over everything else. And now I need to spend my day prompting an AI to fix AI slop code to keep the business hobbling along another day. What a fucking joke.

dofm 4mo ago
It does feel like a good analogy. e.g. the bill is definitely coming true for a lot of "non-traditional construction" materials and methods in immediately post-war properties in the UK. There are many unmortgageable properties using Mundic Block in Cornwall and to some extend Devon, in the heavily bombed south east there was a lot of pre-stressed concrete with catastrophic rebar failure, not to mention Orlit construction, and all across the country a lot of RAAC. Almost all of it for good, necessary, upbeat reasons. It feels a bit like this kind of crisis from AI generated code could hit in ten, fifteen years time; people often fail to understand how long a bit of website code can last.
slopinthebag 4mo ago
Yeah I agree. And you have people on this forum who gleefully point out that quality doesn’t matter to the business, as if they think they’re so intelligent because they noticed that employees are there to make the company money. Not realizing that A) it’s a very antisocial attitude and B) it’s not a tenable long term strategy.
- estearum 4mo ago
  Hang on now. GP didn't say "I care about quality" and I didn't say caring about quality is wrong. GP said Claude's code "doesn't impress" them and that it's "crass." Do you think a valid "long term strategy" is to create code that impresses GP and is not crass, but doesn't achieve the business outcomes it's meant to? Inversely, do you think one can achieve business outcomes if "quality" is so abysmal that the code doesn't work or is unmaintainable? Is it possible to write perfectly good, maintainable, performant, legible code that "doesn't impress" GP, or feels "crass" to them? Well gee, probably! Because "impressiveness" and "crassness" are literally meaningless.