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Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

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

#251

Post by jibal »

user43928 wrote: post #221
fnoef wrote: post #215

Either my brain is cooked or this is AI generated/assisted text. The problem is I can no longer tell the difference between AI and non-AI writing. Maybe my brain got bad, maybe everyone now writes like AI writes. I no longer know.

I did not think so at first, but it indeed comes back 100% AI generated in Pangram.

Pangram is useless ... proven by Substack deploying it and numerous authors complaining that it claims their work is AI.

That said, TFA is slop whether produced by AI or not.

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

#252

Post by danielmarkbruce »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #244
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to costco, buy prime filet. Put it in a ziplock in a sous vide at 130 for an hour. Drop it in corn oil at 425 for 30 seconds. Add some butter and salt. That simple process, suggested by Nathan Myhrvold (former MSFT cto) in the modernist cuisine, produces a filet better than most restaurants.

You leave it unseasoned until the end?

For a filet for 1 hour, you can sort of do what you want. I add a tiny bit of olive oil and salt, but not much. If you start going longer times with the sous vide, you can get different reactions so you have to be more careful.

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

#253

Post by danielmarkbruce »

gamblor956 wrote: post #225
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't go to a good restaurant. Sous vide is extremely common, and oils of various types are used liberally.

Steakhouses, and most restaurants, do not sous vide the meat. It takes too long.

Many do. They don't start when you order....

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

#254

Post by dom96 »

dlcarrier wrote: post #91
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…

Cross-platform widget engines (Tk, GTK, Qt, wxWidgets, etc…) long predate Electron and have always been robust, stable, well documented, and easy to use. It's not creating a single application for multiple native desktop environments that was difficult, it's writing a single application as both a web interface and a native desktop environment on any platform that's difficult. Because CSS is constantly changing, incon…

I've used GTK in the past and I wouldn't consider it robust nor easy to use. But most importantly, it doesn't look good, especially on macOS. No matter how hard you try, you cannot make it feel native.

But the point is: LLMs should make it easy to generate a native UI for each of the main platform's UI frameworks. GTK should no longer be needed.

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

#255

Post by jgilias »

z3t4 wrote: post #58

Using Claude Code is like asking questions in online forums, if anyone remember that, we still have sites like Stack overflow. The difference now is that those asking the questions are actually paying for the answers.

But not the original authors of those answers.

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

#256

Post by dom96 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #165
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…

> We built Electron because writing UIs using native desktop frameworks is tough. No, we built Electron because there are a huge number of people who are too lazy to learn anything outside of HTML/etc for creating a UI. It's not actually hard to make a UI using the native desktop frameworks.

I don't think that's the reason. The fact is that HTML/CSS gives far more flexibility for design than any native framework has ever done. Also, nope, it's not easy to make a UI using native desktop frameworks, especially if you need to target all 3 platforms.

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

#257

Post by BeetleB »

lmm wrote: post #172
Xirdus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to point out this is not a royal "we". It's a regular "we". Royal "we" is when you say "we" but mean a singular person, yourself. Here, the author does actually mean multiple people beyond themselves - like you pointed out, they claim to speak for all software engineers.

No, that is exactly GP's complaint. Their whole point is that OP has written things like "we throw everything at a model and hope it gives us what we imagined, without ever having to understand how any of it actually works" when the honest statement would be "I throw everything at a model and hope it gives me what I imagined, without ever having to understand how any of it actually works".

I'm pretty sure the author intended it as a regular "we".

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

#258

Post by fooker »

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…

We are not getting that reckoning.

It’s great to yearn for bug free software, but that necessarily brings an insane amount of red tape to get anything done. Like 5 years worth of review to start building your code with the next version of your compiler. Or six months to ship a hundred lines of code.

I'd rather have bugs. I’d happily quit having anything to do with software than suffer months of doing nothing in the name of security.

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

#259

Post by tshaddox »

MerrimanInd wrote: post #53
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'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 much about cocktails, but aren't traditional mixed alcoholic drinks an even more straightforward example? There's very little that goes into an old fashioned, or a Manhattan, or a martini. Just 2-3 ingredients each that should be as high quality as possible. I guess you probably want nice ice and glassware too.

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

#260

Post by pnathan »

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…

Reflecting on the matter with a colleague -

Some people just want to _cook the steak_.

They don't want to attend or understand to cuts, thermometers, and searing.

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