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Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

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Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#21

Post by kypro »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

I've been using computers since I was about 12...long time ago. What I've come to the conclusion is this: the best programs and the best tools are the ones that are lovingly (and perhaps with a bit of hate too) crafted by their developers. The best software ecosystems are the ones that are developed slowly and with care. AI coding seems all wrong compared to that world. In fact, the only reason why there is a push fo…

> What I've come to the conclusion is this: the best programs and the best tools are the ones that are lovingly (and perhaps with a bit of hate too) crafted by their developers.

I think this is an example of correlation but not causation. Obviously it's true to some extent in the sense that all things being equal more care is good, but I think all you're probably saying here is that good products are built well and products that are built well tend to be built by developers that care enough to make the right design decisions.

I don't think there's any reason AI couldn't make as good (or better) technical decisions than a human developer that's both technically knowledgable and who cares. I think I personally care a lot about the products I work on, but I'm far from infallible. I often look back at decision I've made and realise I could have done better. I could imagine how an AI with knowledge of every product on Github, a large collection of technical architecture documentation and blog posts could make better decisions than me.

I suppose there's also some creativity involved in making the "right" decisions too. Sometimes products have unique challenges which have no proven solutions that are considered more "correct" than any other. Developers in this cases need to come up with their own creative solutions and rank them on their unique metrics. Could an AI do this? Again, I think so. At least LLMs today seem able to come up with solutions to novel problems, even if they're not always great at this moment in time. Perhaps there are limits to the creativity of current LLMs though and for certain problems which require deep creativity humans will always outperform the best models. But even this is probably only true if LLM architecture doesn't advance – assuming creativity is a limitation in the first place, which I'm far from convinced of.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#22

Post by throwaway_08932 »

squigz wrote: post #14
vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

I've been using computers since I was about 12...long time ago. What I've come to the conclusion is this: the best programs and the best tools are the ones that are lovingly (and perhaps with a bit of hate too) crafted by their developers. The best software ecosystems are the ones that are developed slowly and with care. AI coding seems all wrong compared to that world. In fact, the only reason why there is a push fo…

> AI seems antithetical to the hacker ethic Don't make the mistake I do and think HN is populated predominantly by that type of hacker. This is, at the end of the day, a board for startups. (Not to say none frequent this board, but they seem relatively rare these days)

The "I did this cool thing" posts get way more upvotes than the "let's be startuppy" posts. I don't think the "hacker" population is as rare as you're suggesting.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#23

Post by throwaway_08932 »

couchand wrote: post #16
dartos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. AI may very well plateau, but it might not.

> I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. Is it? I see no evidence that machines are any closer to "thinking creatively" than they ever have been. We certainly have been developing our capacity for computation to a great extent, but it's not at all evident that statistical methods and creativity are the same thing.

A practical definition of "creativity" is "can create interesting things." It's pretty clear that machines have become more "creative" in that sense over the last few years.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#24

Post by squigz »

throwaway_08932 wrote: post #22
squigz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI seems antithetical to the hacker ethic Don't make the mistake I do and think HN is populated predominantly by that type of hacker. This is, at the end of the day, a board for startups. (Not to say none frequent this board, but they seem relatively rare these days)

The "I did this cool thing" posts get way more upvotes than the "let's be startuppy" posts. I don't think the "hacker" population is as rare as you're suggesting.

I don't think "shiny new thing" posts getting more upvotes indicate anything about the hacker population.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#25

Post by evrimoztamur »

alatriste wrote: post #19
vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

I've been using computers since I was about 12...long time ago. What I've come to the conclusion is this: the best programs and the best tools are the ones that are lovingly (and perhaps with a bit of hate too) crafted by their developers. The best software ecosystems are the ones that are developed slowly and with care. AI coding seems all wrong compared to that world. In fact, the only reason why there is a push fo…

I remember when people used to say similar things about using ASM, and then about the craft of writing things in C instead of managed languages like Java. At the end of the day most people will only care about how the tool is solving the problem and how cheaply. A cheap, slow, dirty solution today tends to win over a expensive, quick, elegant one next year. Now there are still some people writing ASM, and a lot of th…

> A cheap, slow, dirty solution today tends to win over a expensive, quick, elegant one next year.

I disagree with this platitude, one reason being the sheer scale of the hidden infrastructure we rely on. Just looking databases alone (Postgres, SQLite, Redis etc.) shows us that reliable and performant solutions dominate over others. Many other examples in other fields like operating system, protocol implementations, cryptography.

It might be that you disagree on the basis of what you see in day-to-day B2B and B2C business cases where just solving the problem gets you paid, but then your statements should reflect that too.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#27

Post by imiric »

couchand wrote: post #16
dartos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. AI may very well plateau, but it might not.

> I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. Is it? I see no evidence that machines are any closer to "thinking creatively" than they ever have been. We certainly have been developing our capacity for computation to a great extent, but it's not at all evident that statistical methods and creativity are the same thing.

This point is often brought up in threads about AI, and I don't think it's accurate.

The thing is that statistical models only need to be fed large amounts of data for them to exhibit what humans would refer to as "creativity", or "thinking" for that matter. The process a human uses to express their creativity is also based on training and the input of other humans, with the difference that it's spread out over years instead of hours, and is a much more organic process.

AI can easily fake creativity by making its output indistinguishable from its training data, and as long as it's accurate and useful, it would hold immense value to humanity. This has been improving drastically in the last few years, so arguing that they're not _really_ thinking creatively doesn't hold much water.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#28

Post by pegasus »

couchand wrote: post #16
dartos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. AI may very well plateau, but it might not.

> I mean it’s definitely a weaker argument than 2 years ago. Is it? I see no evidence that machines are any closer to "thinking creatively" than they ever have been. We certainly have been developing our capacity for computation to a great extent, but it's not at all evident that statistical methods and creativity are the same thing.

> is it?

It is. And I bet most people would agree with GP. Most people (including engineers building these systems) have experienced surprise with some of the outputs of these models. Is there anything better to gauge creativity by than perceived surprise?

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#29

Post by IggleSniggle »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #20
IggleSniggle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely disagree regarding handwriting, and maybe also on maintaining your own typewriter. The task of producing the written document, and I don't just mean the thoughts conveyed, but each stroke of each letter , was a creative act that many enjoyed. Increasingly, there is only a very small subset of enthusiasts that are "serious" about writing by hand. Most "normal" people don't see the value in it, because if…

I agree with you, it's true. I guess I should have been more precise in saying that AI takes away a much greater proportion of creative work. But of course, horse driving, handwriting, and other such things still involved a level of creativity in them, which is why in turn I am against most technology, especially when its use is unrestricted and unmoderated.

I'm highly sympathetic to your perspective, but it would be hypocritical of me to entirely embrace it. Hitting the spacebar just gives me so much joy, the syncopated negative space of it that you don't get writing by hand, the power of typing "top" and getting a birdseye view of your system, that I can't really begrudge the next generation of computing enthusiasts getting that same joy of "simply typing an idea" and getting back a coherent informed response.

I personally lament the loss of the experience of using a computer that gives the same precision that you'd expect from a calculator, but if I'm being honest, that's been slowly degenerating even without the addition of AI.

Re: Thoughts on the Future of Software Development

#30

Post by bsaul »

", I believe there would still be an underlying formal definition of the business logic generated in the backend"

Not just business logic. Technical one too, such as "proove that this critial code can never run into an infinite loop"

AI could very well be the revolution needed to bring theorem proover and other formal proof based languages ( coq, idriss, etc) to the mainstream mass of developers.

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