Software slop has existed for as long as software has existed. AI is now a better coder than the median. By the end of next year it'll be better than the best human coders.
Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
131–140 of 439 posts
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#132Lol, I'm not sure the author expected to set off an army of nerds arguing how difficult it is to cook a proper steak.
God I, totally unironically, love HN.
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#133It would certainly help if it could taste what it produced. Or see, with its eyes, how the result is changing as its process changes. Or learn, from first principles, what is happening at each step and make deductions about how they will affect the result. All it can do is randomly shuffle around the steps and ask if the customer likes it. If they don't, shuffle them around again and hope it's better this time.
Don’t forget the moment where you realize that instead of cooking a steak the agent went for its own invented requirements and spent all your quota preparing everything to make the perfect ramen from scratch (or at least that’s what it tells you, when you ask it to double check what has been done it comes back and tell you it lied and in fact mixed the flour with the soup without making the noodles, with a small note telling you to not forget to prepare the noodles when you go to production)
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know people who can cook a lot of food pretty well, but don't understand why they can't use a laser thermometer to check their meat. Knowing really is half the battle.
Ok, using a laser thermometer for food is hilarious. Thanks for this xD
It is reasonable for measuring cooking environment. Like say pizza oven. Just have to be aware of things like right emissivity.
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know people who can cook a lot of food pretty well, but don't understand why they can't use a laser thermometer to check their meat. Knowing really is half the battle.
What I've really gotten out of this is that I'd like to learn how to use a (proper) meat thermometer when I make steaks.
They have digital thermometers now that will map out the temperature curve and even predicted when the meat will reach core temp. You really don't need to use them many times before you internalize the behavior.
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#136Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#137I 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…
> To build good software with AI, you still have to understand software.
> You need to know what you’re actually asking for, how to judge what comes back, and when the machine is just confidently serving you charcoal.
It's surprising to me this even needs to be written down. Like, obviously still use your brain and think about what the computer is doing. Did you guys think that LLMs were magic?
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's substantially harder to reach self driving than it is to cook a "good" steak. Well, we don't know that, because neither have been achieved.
> Well, we don't know that, because neither have been achieved. Sure, we will completely ignore Waymo and move goal posts...
Is it moving the goalposts to ask Waymo to demonstrate a drive across America and not in well mapped cities with only lower speeds? How did we define "self driving"?
Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#139Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak
#140I 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'm more of a coffee nerd than a steak aficionado but I've often made the comparison between those two. In both cases, the enthusiast considers their skill in making coffee/cooking steak to be a differentiator and they immerse themselves deeply into the process, skills, and tools. But for both coffee beans and steak the most important factor for a good end product is starting with high quality inputs. In other words,…
I don't know if I agree with the take I've written below, but I think you can make the analogy work:
It has been argued, even in the before-AI-times, that most professional software is just gluing together open source tools and libraries. Your job isn't to write software, it's to set up redis and postgres and a programming language and a react frontend or whatever in a way that lets them do what they're there to do. Most modern programming is just configuration of pre-existing tools. It doesn't really matter how good your code is as long as it isn't terrible, Real Programmers already did 95% of the necessary work before you decided to build your little app.