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Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

maggieappleton.com

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Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#31

Post by liampulles »

Unpopular opinion inbound: what will spark a barefoot developer revolution is not LLM auto-coding, its making spreadsheet software more easily extendable and FUN.

By extendable, I mean doing things like generating and sending emails, and using plugins to integrate with external services. By fun, I mean non-enterprisey, something that one would WANT to engage in as a hobby and that a total novice can pick up and gradually learn. Something you can engage in with friends.

I know that there are things that meet the extendable part of the equation, its the fun hobby part that I don't think has been cracked yet.

I think a big part of why I became a coder is because I enjoyed playing with Microsoft Access as a kid - but I'm a weird nerd, so I don't think that'll cut it for others.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#32

Post by dan-allen »

liampulles wrote: post #31

Unpopular opinion inbound: what will spark a barefoot developer revolution is not LLM auto-coding, its making spreadsheet software more easily extendable and FUN. By extendable, I mean doing things like generating and sending emails, and using plugins to integrate with external services. By fun, I mean non-enterprisey, something that one would WANT to engage in as a hobby and that a total novice can pick up and gradu…

Oh that’s interesting and I think you’re right. Software as it’s developed today is very abstract but spreadsheets have a visual representation that makes them much more approachable.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#33

Post by matrix87 »

It isn't even that high of a barrier for entry though? If someone really wants a piece of software that does something, there's probably already some python library for it. calling some imported python function isn't hard

if someone is too lazy to find some python library to import, but driven enough to come up with an unambiguous way of telling a model to do something in natural language, that's a borderline non-existent demographic

really it's kind of baffling to me, some people just hear "code" and think we're talking about some undecipherable thing like the Voynich manuscript. makes me feel like the guy out of the Zen and Motorcycle maintenance book who was confused why his friend refused to figure out how to fix his own bike. some people just refuse to learn. if they wanted to, they would have already

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#34

Post by throwanem »

dan-allen wrote: post #32
liampulles wrote: post #31

Unpopular opinion inbound: what will spark a barefoot developer revolution is not LLM auto-coding, its making spreadsheet software more easily extendable and FUN. By extendable, I mean doing things like generating and sending emails, and using plugins to integrate with external services. By fun, I mean non-enterprisey, something that one would WANT to engage in as a hobby and that a total novice can pick up and gradu…

Oh that’s interesting and I think you’re right. Software as it’s developed today is very abstract but spreadsheets have a visual representation that makes them much more approachable.

An immediate visual representation, at that. HMR at best offers a pale shadow of the feedback loop Excel users get for free.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#35

Post by JohnMakin »

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…

This is not really a new problem, the previous version being "idk, I copy pasted it from stack overflow." True expertise realized that the answer often lay buried in sub-comments and the top voted answer is not often the correct one. LLM's naturally do not realize any of this.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#36

Post by ozim »

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…

Only if people would start using OSS projects that are out there for them for free and contribute (where contribute means, using, supporting, adding to documentation) it would be solved already.

You know there is libre office, there are tons of other OSS apps - accounting, CAD, image manipulation.

Whole idea that people somehow need to be developers is crooked and making it worse. There are tons of already useful local first software rotting out there - only because „everyone uses Photoshop” „everyone uses Excel”.

I don’t agree with „barefoot developers” - it should be „OSS promoters” that promote open standards and open applications and not come build up each and every piece of software by reinventing the wheel.

I as a developer don’t need to make every app for myself - 99% of my needs for software in personal life is covered by excel and 1% is communication apps that cannot be local and someone has to run server anyway.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#37

Post by ozim »

Just use OSS that already is there and contribute to it and we have it covered - no need for „everyone becoming a developer” and there are tons of local first OSS tools.

Where contributing is using OSS, commenting on it, sharing work done with OSS tools with others, filling in bug requests and maybe even paying something for it.

Working with tools and sharing work done with tools is important because everyone is using photoshop instead of Gimp, everyone is using Excel instead of libre office.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#38

Post by atrus »

ozim wrote: post #37

Just use OSS that already is there and contribute to it and we have it covered - no need for „everyone becoming a developer” and there are tons of local first OSS tools. Where contributing is using OSS, commenting on it, sharing work done with OSS tools with others, filling in bug requests and maybe even paying something for it. Working with tools and sharing work done with tools is important because everyone is usin…

Yeah, "scratching your own itch" was a driving force for a lot of the OSS stuff

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#39

Post by bawolff »

therobots927 wrote: post #28
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?

Well, if i knew what the solution was i would be making it instead of waxing poetic about it on hn.

While sql (or say microsoft access) could be seen as an intermediary, i don't really think it is. It is very specialized to specific applications, and arguably rdbms are more complex than basic python.

Re: Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers

#40

Post by fragmede »

JohnFen wrote: post #29
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 discourag…

It sounds like you've discouraged yourself from learning the skill of using an LLM to help you code.
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