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Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

maggieappleton.com

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Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#21

Post by rsolva »

runningamok wrote: post #15

There is a lot of reason to be excited about local-first and how it could enable much lower costs to build useful apps (both in terms of money and skills). AI will certainly spur that on. But I think local-first will be of the biggest benefit to small teams of professional developers who can see local opportunities bigger corporations are missing. At least in the short term. There are barefoot developers too, but it'…

Anytype is such a tool, local-first and synced via IPFS. It just works. And it's so flexible! And it recently got support for shared spaces, which works really well.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#22

Post by bawolff »

skadamat wrote: post #10
iwontberude wrote: post #4

Not a single mention of Open Source Software. The author is missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

Well, from my POV, the licensing part of this is only a small part of the puzzle. Open source software that’s insanely complex to run and is developed like industrial software still doesn’t make it amenable for home cooking / barefoot use. The bigger limiter is the missing culture of deliberately small and individualized software to specific people, families, or small communities. That’s the mindset Maggie is trying…

Open source is the natural conclusion of "barefoot development".

Sure, now a days there are lots of big professional projects, but the core of open source/Free software, is people making stuff for themselves and their neighbours.

Linux didn't start with the goal of taking over the world. It started as one guy's amateur project.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#23

Post by luke-stanley »

bawolff wrote: post #18

Personally i'd rather we bridge the gap between using excel and writing python with something that is between the two, rather than relying on LLMs. Call me a skeptic, but i remain very unconvinced that LLMs will be the enabling tool that lets non programmers program.

I agree that something between Python and Excel is a good idea. But still, LLMs are good at using in context learning to convert natural language to a given pattern language or format, and where people don't know what the syntax is. Making visual interfaces that are so easy to use that they don't need to use such magic would be nice. But it seems hard to do that.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#24

Post by 9dev »

If I have learnt one thing working in software engineering, specifically on AI-enabled products empowering junior engineers, and using Copilot professionally, it’s that you need even more experience to detect the subtleties in the lack of the models understanding of your domain, your specific intent. If you don’t know exactly what you’re after, and use the LLM as a sparring partner to bounce your ideas off, you’re in for a lot of pain.

Depending on the way you phrase questions, ChatGPT will gleefully suggest you a wrong approach, just because it’s so intent on satisfying your whim instead of saying No when it would be appropriate.

And in addition to that, you don’t learn by figuring out a new concept. If you already have a feeling of the code you would write anyway, and only treat the model as a smart autocomplete, that doesn’t matter. But for an apprentice, or a layperson, that will keep code as scary and unpredictable as before. I don’t think that should be the answer.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#25

Post by luke-stanley »

skadamat wrote: post #19

For people who want more examples of this “vibe”, here’s a tiny subset of places / people / projects to check out: https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/ https://cristobal.space/writing/folk-computer.html https://dynamicland.org/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ https://www.geoffreylitt.com/ https://maggieappleton.com/folk-interfaces

Fixed link: https://futureofcoding.org/catalog/

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#26

Post by Turing_Machine »

9dev wrote: post #24

If I have learnt one thing working in software engineering, specifically on AI-enabled products empowering junior engineers, and using Copilot professionally, it’s that you need even more experience to detect the subtleties in the lack of the models understanding of your domain, your specific intent. If you don’t know exactly what you’re after, and use the LLM as a sparring partner to bounce your ideas off, you’re in…

> just because it’s so intent on satisfying your whim instead of saying No

This really, really, really needs to be fixed. It's probably the most irritating (and potentially risky) part of the whole ecosystem. Nothing more infuriating than being give code that not only doesn't work, but upon the most casual inspection, couldn't possibly work -- especially when it's done it four or five times in a row, each time assuring you that this time the code is gonna work. Pinky swear!

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#27

Post by iwontberude »

skadamat wrote: post #10
iwontberude wrote: post #4

Not a single mention of Open Source Software. The author is missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

Well, from my POV, the licensing part of this is only a small part of the puzzle. Open source software that’s insanely complex to run and is developed like industrial software still doesn’t make it amenable for home cooking / barefoot use. The bigger limiter is the missing culture of deliberately small and individualized software to specific people, families, or small communities. That’s the mindset Maggie is trying…

More than just a license, free and open source is about us leveraging each other's effort for problems deemed too unprofitable for major companies. It’s required for the authors solution to scale but they don’t mention it.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#28

Post by therobots927 »

bawolff wrote: post #18

Personally i'd rather we bridge the gap between using excel and writing python with something that is between the two, rather than relying on LLMs. Call me a skeptic, but i remain very unconvinced that LLMs will be the enabling tool that lets non programmers program.

How would this new intermediate be different from SQL?

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#29

Post by JohnFen »

9dev wrote: post #24

If I have learnt one thing working in software engineering, specifically on AI-enabled products empowering junior engineers, and using Copilot professionally, it’s that you need even more experience to detect the subtleties in the lack of the models understanding of your domain, your specific intent. If you don’t know exactly what you’re after, and use the LLM as a sparring partner to bounce your ideas off, you’re in…

> you don’t learn by figuring out a new concept

This.

If LLMs were actually some magical thing that could write my code for me, I wouldn't use them for exactly this reason. Using them would prevent me from learning new skills and would actively encourage my existing skillset to degrade.

The thing that keeps me valuable in this industry is that I am always improving, always learning new skills. Anything that discourages that smells like career (and personal) poison to me.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#30

Post by 9dev »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #26
9dev wrote: post #24

If I have learnt one thing working in software engineering, specifically on AI-enabled products empowering junior engineers, and using Copilot professionally, it’s that you need even more experience to detect the subtleties in the lack of the models understanding of your domain, your specific intent. If you don’t know exactly what you’re after, and use the LLM as a sparring partner to bounce your ideas off, you’re in…

> just because it’s so intent on satisfying your whim instead of saying No This really, really, really needs to be fixed. It's probably the most irritating (and potentially risky) part of the whole ecosystem. Nothing more infuriating than being give code that not only doesn't work, but upon the most casual inspection, couldn't possibly work -- especially when it's done it four or five times in a row, each time assuri…

“You‘re right, I apologize for the oversight. Let’s do the same bloody thing exactly the same way again because I don’t know how to answer your question differently but am forced to never admit that…“
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