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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

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Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#111

Post by swat535 »

mdwelsh wrote: post #35

This article resonated tremendously with me, speaking as someone who has been coding since the 1980s and had to develop my own taste the hard way, through lots and lots of mistakes. Whenever I see a software demo built by someone mostly using agents to do the work, I have to question whether it's any good on the inside - or whether any real intuition or judgment went into its design. On the flip side, maybe none of t…

For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form.

People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work.

I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say in the software than engineers. UI polish matters more since it increases sales.

This is the hardest thing to come into terms with in this industry.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#112

Post by Seattle3503 »

vor_ wrote: post #107
DrBrock wrote: post #77

I find this post disheartening. To my eye, it seems to be the author's first blog entry with obvious LLM contributions. Given the recent "moving to a farm" ... 7 days later ... "leaving the farm" posts, it's hard not to read this as someone clearly struggling with the burnout which is all too common in our industry, and resultingly giving in to the false promise of a machine that can just handle the thinking for you.

They've updated the article to state that no LLM was used.

Yeah, I don't believe them.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#113

Post by jatora »

swat535 wrote: post #111
mdwelsh wrote: post #35

This article resonated tremendously with me, speaking as someone who has been coding since the 1980s and had to develop my own taste the hard way, through lots and lots of mistakes. Whenever I see a software demo built by someone mostly using agents to do the work, I have to question whether it's any good on the inside - or whether any real intuition or judgment went into its design. On the flip side, maybe none of t…

For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form. People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work. I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say…

Marketing and designers do not get more say in software. They get more say on the "surface", which we all know is 10% of the software.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#114

Post by jatora »

bijowo1676 wrote: post #89
hellojomp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, when you have a McDonald's McDouble, do you really care how it was made or do you just care that it's yummeroni and costs $2.99?

it is profitable to sell McDoubles, since they are popular and cheap, but McDonalds CEO doesnt eat its own burgers https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1rhug58/mcd... so it is profitable to sell vibecoding tools, but its unlikely to be consumed by "serious organizations"

Except AI corporations by and large all eat their own burgers (since any developer not leveraging agents effectively is woefully ignorant)

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#115

Post by jatora »

GrayHerring wrote: post #40

Hard disagree on "Good enough", most things are mediocre at best. Despite the massive AI boom I can at best count on one hand "fresh" products made with AI that are meaningful in day-to-day usage. Not to mention most of them seem to be targeting AI-space itself instead of bridging some actual business use case. Just look at all the products on ShowHN, you can "tell" a vibed product in seconds.

You are using countless products that are built or have become maintained by AI without realizing it apparently.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#116

Post by jdzikowski »

When resources are scarce, you are forced to use them in a meaningful way. You learn to do only what matters most: what is right, minimal, essential. When you need to choose wisely when resources are scarce -- this is how you learn the taste.

Now that creation is cheap, the scarcity has moved to adoption. Things built without taste are less likely to be adopted, to survive. At least that is what I'd like to believe.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#117

Post by devin »

mdwelsh wrote: post #35

This article resonated tremendously with me, speaking as someone who has been coding since the 1980s and had to develop my own taste the hard way, through lots and lots of mistakes. Whenever I see a software demo built by someone mostly using agents to do the work, I have to question whether it's any good on the inside - or whether any real intuition or judgment went into its design. On the flip side, maybe none of t…

“as long as it works” is doing a lot of work here. Did the people building it say “no, again” enough times, and at the right times, in order to make something that _actually_ works instead of _merely_ works?

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#118

Post by lugoues »

jatora wrote: post #113
swat535 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form. People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work. I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say…

Marketing and designers do not get more say in software. They get more say on the "surface", which we all know is 10% of the software.

Yes but that 10% is all that matter to the people that matter to the business. Like a car, most people care about how it looks and how they interact with it... the only people who care what is under the hood, for the most part, are other engineers.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#119

Post by abixb »

I've run this thought experiment a number of times with different sections of my (relatively) diverse friend circle. I ask them a version of this question on repeat: "what if AI automates X aspect of your work?", and the final answer (either because of frustration with the loopy nature of the question or a genuine stopping point) arrives somewhere along the lines of "my judgement," "my knack," "my embodied nature," or "my quality of decision making."

I think the core still leads back to human agency and the ability to consider aspects that wouldn't fit into an LLMs limited context window or be able to be vectorized into a DB, including ultra-long-term consequences (especially those with great thinking abilities).

I still happen to think that AI/LLMs will never be able to "fully" replace humans, because the evolutionary process that led to our cognitive abilities and the way we train LLMs are vastly different thanks to different pressures, but maybe that's just me defending the last bastions of our collective humanity as a human; I don't know what else to root for.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#120

Post by scotty79 »

jdzikowski wrote: post #116

When resources are scarce, you are forced to use them in a meaningful way. You learn to do only what matters most: what is right, minimal, essential. When you need to choose wisely when resources are scarce -- this is how you learn the taste. Now that creation is cheap, the scarcity has moved to adoption. Things built without taste are less likely to be adopted, to survive. At least that is what I'd like to believe.

Absolutely not. Scarcity forces you to do with what you have. Only in abundance, only when you can have everything, you have room and reason to develop taste.
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