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Slop is not necessarily the future

greptile.com

11–20 of 512 posts

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#11
post #9

If "good code" == "useful code", then yes. People forget that good engineering isn't "the strongest bridge", but the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail under conditions.

What would happen if we made bridges to last as long as possible, to withstand natural disasters and require minimal maintenance? What if we built things that are meant to last? Would the world be better for it?

Devil's advocate here. Maybe we'd all forget how to build bridges in the next thousand years, after bridging all the bridg-able spans.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#13
post #3

Good code wasn't winning even before the ai slop era! The pattern was always: ship fast, fix/document later, but when "later" comes "don't touch what is working". To date nothing changed yet, I bet it won't change even in the future.

I was told by an exec...once a company or technology implements something and gets mindshare, the community (including companies) moves on. Competition is essentially dead for that segment given there is always outward growth. With that being said, AI enables smaller players to implement their visions with enough completeness to be viable. And with a hands off approach to code, the underlying technology mindshare doe…

If that were true first movers would always win. Hotmail came before Gmail. Yahoo came before Google. Myspace came before Facebook. Et cetera. Of course it is best to avoid competition by creating a new (sub)category but category kings can change.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#14
post #9

If "good code" == "useful code", then yes. People forget that good engineering isn't "the strongest bridge", but the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail under conditions.

> the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail

That can't be right? What about safety factors

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#15
post #9

If "good code" == "useful code", then yes. People forget that good engineering isn't "the strongest bridge", but the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail under conditions.

What would happen if we made bridges to last as long as possible, to withstand natural disasters and require minimal maintenance? What if we built things that are meant to last? Would the world be better for it?

What if instead of one bridge we build three, so more people can cross the river?

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#16
post #14
post #9

If "good code" == "useful code", then yes. People forget that good engineering isn't "the strongest bridge", but the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail under conditions.

> the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail That can't be right? What about safety factors

Safety factors exist because without them, bridges fall down

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#18
post #9

If "good code" == "useful code", then yes. People forget that good engineering isn't "the strongest bridge", but the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail under conditions.

What would happen if we made bridges to last as long as possible, to withstand natural disasters and require minimal maintenance? What if we built things that are meant to last? Would the world be better for it?

> What if we built things that are meant to last? Would the world be better for it?

You'd have a better bridge, at the expense of other things, like hospitals or roads. If people choose good-enough bridges, that shows there is something else they value more.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#19
post #9

If "good code" == "useful code", then yes. People forget that good engineering isn't "the strongest bridge", but the cheapest bridge that just barely won't fail under conditions.

What would happen if we made bridges to last as long as possible, to withstand natural disasters and require minimal maintenance? What if we built things that are meant to last? Would the world be better for it?

Look up Roman concrete. There are 2000 year old bridges and aqueducts still in use.

We only recently figured out how to reproduce Roman concrete.

We’d have more but a lot were blown up during WWII.

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