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Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

blog.sydorets.com

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Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#41

Post by CBLT »

xtajv wrote: post #12

I do not appreciate when authors use the royal "we" to speak for all software engineers when admitting to low quality-control standards. I suspect that it is an attempt to broach an uncomfortable topic through vulnerable self-disclosure, but we need to be serious about admitting when there is a problem somewhere. "Bugs" are not any more cute or fuzzy or entertaining or harmless than the engine "gremlins" that haunted…

Article aside, I generally always use the "we" pronoun at work when writing prose. Saying "I" feels too adversarial when talking about negative effects, or too self-aggrandizing when talking about positive effects. For example: "We discovered a bug shipped at the end of the merge window, so we will restart validation with the rollback applied." I think in school they say the business-safe way to write is instead with the passive voice but I just can't do it.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#43

Post by wuliwong »

freediddy wrote: post #11

The main problem with this entire article is that sometimes, if not most times, you don't need great steak. Sometimes you just want to satisfy your hunger and if the steak is lower quality meat or if it's overcooked, you don't care. All you want is to not be hungry. This is what vibe coding satisfies and frankly what most people care about. 85-90% of human written code is garbage anyway. There's nothing sacred about…

I was going to say something similar. In particular, I do a lot of prototyping, AI has allowed me to make prototypes an order of magnitude faster with substantially higher quality. Different types of software engineering have very different goals and standards. AI does cook the perfect medium rare steak every time, but it's able to actually cook steaks in the time it used to take me to like microwave a burrito.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#44

Post by galgantar »

I like the comparrison of the AI coding agent to the steak machine. But it is not just about machines scaling better - the laundromat can wash clothes better than a human would. Similarily the AI agent's performance can EXCEED one of a human engineer for simple, well-defined tasks (eg. go over all of the subpages and check that the latest push didn't break something).

Hiring AI cooks is not a problem imo, as long as the human glances over everything that they serve.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#45

Post by PaulRobinson »

MostlyStable wrote: post #30

I take the point, but I think the author picked a poor analogy. Cooking even an excellent steak is actually not that hard. In fact, I'd argue that it's among the easiest things to master/make at a top level quality at home. Does it require some modicum of attention and understanding? Sure. But starting with a high quality cut, owning a meat-thermometer, and knowing about reverse searing is about all it takes to relia…

All metaphors break at some point.

However, your example actually proves the point.

How many people who want a good steak know how to identify a high quality cut? Do they even know where to buy a high quality cut? What the different cuts are and whether they want rump, sirloin or fillet? How many kitchens have a meat thermometer? How many home cooks know how to use it and what the right temperature should be? How many home cooks know about reverse searing? Or timing? Or resting? Or seasoning?

Is it all learnable? Sure. But even something as simple as steak has nuance that needs to be learned, equipment deployed to go from "pretty good" to "great", experimentation and trial and error.

Steak is the simplest thing to choose to get started. It's also the hardest to get right.

Building an app is the simplest thing to choose to get started. It's also the hardest to get right.

So, honestly, the whole metaphor stands up pretty well for me, specifically because of your response.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#47

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

freediddy wrote: post #11

The main problem with this entire article is that sometimes, if not most times, you don't need great steak. Sometimes you just want to satisfy your hunger and if the steak is lower quality meat or if it's overcooked, you don't care. All you want is to not be hungry. This is what vibe coding satisfies and frankly what most people care about. 85-90% of human written code is garbage anyway. There's nothing sacred about…

> There's nothing sacred about human-written code

I suspect that there is a lifetime of knowledge and experience wrapped up in that statement and I agree wholeheartedly.

I love writing software and I've been doing it for decades. But I never forget that at the end, there's someone who's paid for it, and needs it to do a job that can't/won't be done manually. And that's why it exists. Not to satisfy my desire to express myself in code, not to allow me to create some golden tower of perfect architecture, but to do a job. Most likely a boring job in the service of increased profitability for some company.

And in the end, the only thing that matters to the customer is if it does that job well enough to be useful. I think -- hell, I know -- that many developers deliberately ignore this critical point.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#48

Post by criddell »

judge2020 wrote: post #25
dom96 wrote: post #19

I hope and believe that some great companies and teams will use LLMs to build higher quality software. We built Electron because writing UIs using native desktop frameworks is tough. Is it still tough? Surely LLMs make it easier to use and so we will end up with faster and more native feeling applications. What about having a couple of ideas of what might make a feature feel good? Well now you can make multiple proto…

Idk, OpenAI themselves released some weird Electron app to replace their native version of ChatGPT on mac https://www.siliconreport.com/openais-chatgpt-mac-update-shi...

That was such a weird move for them to make. If you have AIs that are good at building software, then use them to build great software! Instead they choose lowest-common denominator solutions that are okay everywhere but not great anywhere.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#49

Post by froh42 »

MostlyStable wrote: post #30

I take the point, but I think the author picked a poor analogy. Cooking even an excellent steak is actually not that hard. In fact, I'd argue that it's among the easiest things to master/make at a top level quality at home. Does it require some modicum of attention and understanding? Sure. But starting with a high quality cut, owning a meat-thermometer, and knowing about reverse searing is about all it takes to relia…

I was just curious asked chatgpt:

How can I make a really great steak myself? What to look out for, what to do. Give me detailed instructions.

I got a really good answer (including - cut, temperature and reverse searing), so I probably won't even need understanding. (Oh - and yes, I can cook - the answer mirrors what I already know).

Yes, it was a very, very poor analogy, because cooking a steak is a well known and well documented thing where LLMS produce good output. They fail when you get off the beaten path and try to do something that's not "mainstream".

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#50

Post by fhdkweig »

LPisGood wrote: post #8
nehal3m wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what the entire economy does by design. You make the lowest common denominator people will still pay for.

And people seek out the highest quality product they can pay the lease for

Not always. There are diminishing returns at the top end of the quality spectrum. I tend to go with the cheaper item even if I can technically afford the more expensive one if their quality is close enough.
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