the logo is an unsettling convolution of the back orifice logo
Now that you mention it, I'll never see the symbol of the Galactic Empire the same way again.
A software conference that advocates for quality
11–20 of 160 posts
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#12Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
Well, a couple years ago this stuff all sucked (well, a lot more). Yeah it's in many cases somewhat borderline now, but still - this is frickin magic compared to what I thought was possible just a little while ago.
My question is how far does it go - are the gains going to peter out, or does it keep going or even accelerate? Seems like one of the latter two thus far.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#13Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
Yeah it's interesting, unless I lean hard on them, AI coding agents will tend to solve problems with a lot of "hedging" by splitting into cases or duplicating code. It is totally fine with infinity special cases and unless you push for it, they will solve most problems with special cases and not generalise or consolidate (gemini, claude code at least both seem to have this behaviour).
I feel like this comes about because it's the optimal strategy for doing robust one-shot "point fixes", but it comes at the cost of long-term codebase heath.
I have noticed this bias towards lots of duplication eventually creates a kind of "ai code soup" that you can only really "fix" or keep working on with AI from that point out.
With the right guidance and hints you can get it to refactor and generalise - and it does it well - but the default style definitely trends to "slop" in my experience so far.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#14Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
> Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good
I would guess the same way humans do.
Put brain in creative mode, bang out something that works
Put brain in rules compliance mode and tidy everything up.
Then send for code review.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#15Seems like a waste of time to me, especially in this age of AI slop somehow passing as quality. Just another excuse to drink/network/party on company’s dime.
However, I would be interested in establishing a union for technologists across the nation. Drive quality from the bottom up, form local chapters, collectively bargain.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#16Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
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Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#17Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
Yeah it's interesting, unless I lean hard on them, AI coding agents will tend to solve problems with a lot of "hedging" by splitting into cases or duplicating code. It is totally fine with infinity special cases and unless you push for it, they will solve most problems with special cases and not generalise or consolidate (gemini, claude code at least both seem to have this behaviour). I feel like this comes about bec…
To be fair, a lot of humans also have this problem.
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#18Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
They probably just manage to realize that being seen to be "moving fast with AI" simply isn't a goal unto itself, that it has to deliver something of value beyond itself.
We could be in a tortoise vs. hare situation... Unless we find ourselves back in the conditions of the 2010's again, thoughtfully building software to be high quality and high performance may win out in the long run over "move fast and break things."
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#19Looking forward to Casey Muratori's talk!
When I saw the title of the conference I immediately thought of him so I'm not surprised he's headlining!
Re: A software conference that advocates for quality
#20Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense. Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.
In DJB's paper on software quality he identifies actionable strategies for code quality and code security that were born out of frustration to sendmail's exploit after exploit. Very accessible and fun read: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf
I would expect this conf to expand on those types of concepts and strategies.