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Domain expertise has always been the real moat

brethorsting.com

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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#61

Post by jandrewrogers »

wg0 wrote: post #14

This is such a sane take. It is THE reality we have been always ignoring. Writing software has never been difficult. It is the domain that has been the issue. Always.

Writing software for a domain is itself a domain of expertise, with a similar learning curve. It isn't enough to know the programming language.

For example, it takes years to develop the knowledge and idioms required to effectively write high-performance systems code, which is separate from the language the code is written in. You can have decades of experience in a systems language and zero experience writing modern systems code in that language. Same with embedded code, supercomputing code, etc.

Writing software is only "not difficult" if you've already learned how to write it.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#62

Post by toastmaster11 »

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level?

First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really.

Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable, state of improvement or stagnation, these takes will continue to be pointless and most likely completely wrong.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#63

Post by asdff »

saulpw wrote: post #49
asdff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is kind of funny though how all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in comparison. Still playing games, still same old discussion forums/social media/whatever on the internet, same email and office suite, same chat, same media players, same everything. I can't even…

I mostly agree with you, but you couldn't have have meaningful live videochat between continents in 2000.

That took until skype in 2003 I guess. The idea is pretty old though and people were trying for it for a while from different angles.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#64

Post by jaggederest »

azuanrb wrote: post #47

I recently reviewed an app built mostly with vibe coding. The owner said it was almost ready to launch and just needed a quick check. After looking through it, the database design was a mess. Some features worked, some didn’t. I explained the missing pieces and why things were breaking. Like OP said, he’s the domain expert. I used billions of tokens last month alone. The tools are getting better fast. But giving AI t…

Where I am headed, I think, is to basically be a platform engineer. The job is to create the guardrails, validation, prompt library, and both agent and manual reviews; that keeps the domain experts safe when they start using coding agents.

It's a little bit like being T2/T3 customer support [or support engineer], but internal. You're there to catch the dangerous spots, the weird edge cases, and to make sure that everything is set up correctly, rather than to solve 100% of the routine problems yourself.

There's also plenty of room for cross-cutting-concerns, of course

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#68

Post by xkcd-sucks »

azuanrb wrote: post #47

I recently reviewed an app built mostly with vibe coding. The owner said it was almost ready to launch and just needed a quick check. After looking through it, the database design was a mess. Some features worked, some didn’t. I explained the missing pieces and why things were breaking. Like OP said, he’s the domain expert. I used billions of tokens last month alone. The tools are getting better fast. But giving AI t…

Domain expertise combined with a QA mindset could replace SWE, but consistent QA mindset is rare

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#69

Post by ChicagoDave »

Nice idea, but engineers are engineers for a reason.

I’d suggest that the domain expert partner with a GenAI senior engineer to build together. In fact I believe this is the new dev team model. Domain Expert + Senior Engineer + QA. Not sure we still need a project manager anymore and we certainly don’t need scrum masters.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#70

Post by avaer »

There's a lot of people agreeing and disagreeing with the article, but on what grounds? How do you know "domain expertise" is a "moat"? Vibes? Has there been ongoing, persistent attacks by AI on domain expertise where we can say the moat holds, economically speaking? So far it seems quite the opposite.

So far the evidence seems to be pointing to a different adage, Sutton's Bitter Lesson, which (generalized) says to not bring human expertise to a problem that can be "solved" with unfathomable volumes of data. Because the latter has historically slaughtered the former for decades. But somehow people believe this time it's different?

I will counter there is one thing that is a persistent moat, and it's not domain expertise; it's sales. Convincing other humans to part with their money. Humans have shown they will trust a person/human touch to part with their money more than an AI.

But I'm not convinced today's AI or tomorrow's won't be able to replicate domain expertise in domain X for any X.

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