Earlier quoted context omitted.
> sometimes I wonder if most of us do the job to play with silly tools rather than actually make shit. Yes? I thought this is common knowledge. Here's a universal tool whose potential is limited only by one's imagination, and yet most of the jobs in our profession are at best boring - the high-paying ones usually involve making actively harmful things that shouldn't exist in the first place (see e.g. whole adtech for…
Often I can do what I need in a few minutes in excel where à programmer would take hours and not give me what I actually asked for. And in excel I can modify and update my work. Where a programme solution is static and needs tons more hours for every change needed. Often we see people claiming that "This new thing is the spreadsheet killer, like ai at the moment. People have been saying this forever but spreadsheets…
AI sits at the "speed" corner. Excel, a fully dynamic interactive programming language with one type "cell", gives slightly better correctness and accountability. Coalescing process into program continues to move you to the other end. Once you start employing typechecking and later formal verification, you get more correctness and accountability - BUT at a cost of development time, AND generality. The correctness is achieved precisely by being tailored to the specifics and rejecting the general.
This can apply to entirely physical processes. Some "aerospace" grade parts are very similar to normal parts .. but with a huge overhead of accountability. Because getting the right outcome matters.