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Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

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Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#131

Post by Jensson »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #72
andai wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea cabinet is pleasant to look at, and its design makes sense.

But how many times can you take a piece of Ikea furniture apart and put it back together again? I have friends who have moved apartments with the same Billy bookshelf 2-3 times and if they tried it one more time the thing would collapse. Not to belabor the metaphor as heavily as my friend's Billy, but there's a maintenance corellary to be made here. Most Ikea furniture can be put together once, in one place, and left…

> But how many times can you take a piece of Ikea furniture apart and put it back together again?

How many times can you take apart regular furniture and put it back together again? Most furniture doesn't come apart at all, just move the ikea furniture like you move any other furniture don't take it apart every time and you are fine, it would be weaker if it was possible to disassemble it without issue.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#132

Post by bartread »

mattmanser wrote: post #106
DanielHB wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this sentiment, IKEA furniture is much more sustainable than artisanal furniture. Most of the "back in the day" furniture came from tearing down virgin woods. Sorting + shredding-recycling + making new "cheap particle board crap" furniture takes a lot of energy, but not a lot of non-renewable resources. With increased electrification this problem is being drastically reduced and the wood is sourced fr…

This seems delusional to me, being older and more experienced with how long IKEA stuff actually lasts. 8 years is long for IKEA furniture, usually something has irreplaceablely broken by then. IKEA also refuse to sell you spare parts. Give me real furniture anyday.

> IKEA also refuse to sell you spare parts.

Sorry to call bullshit but I think that’s exactly what this statement is.

Just looking at our wardrobe and thinking about how it’s actually not one thing at all, but made up of dozens of different SKUs, and how I could reorder any of them individually if I needed. There are also third party sellers of parts such as runners, door rails, and the like (not that you need them since these can all be purchased from IKEA anyway).

The challenge with IKEA is colours: they used to offer more colours, but now lots of stuff is black white, grey, or beige with no other options (and sometimes white is the only option). If you need to replace a part in a colour other than that nowadays, you’ll perhaps find it difficult to impossible.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#133

Post by ben_w »

samiv wrote: post #78
Alien1Being wrote: post #38

AI generated code is like IKEA furniture. IKEA furniture embodies many elements of good cabinet making but skips many nonessential elements. And does this more consistently than cabinet makers who can be bored, incompetent, depressed, burnt out, resentful, tired, having a bad day. In the future AI code inevitably will embody most good software engineering practices. And will do this more consistently than software en…

What a sad analogy. IKEA furniture is mostly cheap particle board crap and it's a shame that we as a humanity have cheapened our lives to the point where IKEA is some kind of standard (and the only thing) most people can afford. Back in the day furniture was artisanal and hand made yet people were able to afford and have it. Isn't that in fact weird, supposedly our societies are richer than ever before but most peopl…

> What a sad analogy. IKEA furniture is mostly cheap particle board crap

The first time I saw GenAI compared to IKEA, it was for this reason, ~"particle board is fine for furniture, but you really don't want it to be a load-bearing part of your house".

> Isn't that in fact weird, supposedly our societies are richer than ever before but most people can't afford artisanal goods that our forefathers would be able to afford even though they were supposedly so much poorer.

Shakespeare's will gave to his wife his "second best bed"; if a relative of yours wrote in their will that you'd get a fancy antique bed, would you want it?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare's_will

> (Hint, distribution of wealth matters a lot)

This was true in the past, too. The historical artefacts we mostly see are the exceptions that survived, not what average people owned.

The tightly-packed wooden homes of London before the Great Fire just aren't there any more, and even fancy places in the same category as now-iconic British country houses were not immune, "around 4,000 were demolished between 1875 and 1975" according to https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/the-fal...

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#134

Post by graemep »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #72
andai wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea cabinet is pleasant to look at, and its design makes sense.

But how many times can you take a piece of Ikea furniture apart and put it back together again? I have friends who have moved apartments with the same Billy bookshelf 2-3 times and if they tried it one more time the thing would collapse. Not to belabor the metaphor as heavily as my friend's Billy, but there's a maintenance corellary to be made here. Most Ikea furniture can be put together once, in one place, and left…

Its a mistake to take it apart.

The problem is made worse because people are more likely to buy cheap furniture if they are likely to move anytime soon. There is no point investing in good furniture that might not suit the next place.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#135

Post by graemep »

LtWorf wrote: post #128
graemep wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the "back in the day" furniture came from tearing down virgin woods. Sorting + shredding-recycling + making new "cheap particle board crap" furniture takes a lot of energy, but not a lot of non-renewable resources. It also lasted a lot longer. I have inherited furniture that must be around a 100 years old now and a lot that is over 50 years old and doing fine. A lot of my friends have older (even hundreds o…

You've never seen ikea furniture if you think it lasts less than a decade.

Did you read my whole comment?

I said some lasts less than a decade, and I have quite a lot of IKEA furniture. I also said its better than most cheap furniture.

I even mentioned a specific piece of IKEA furniture I own that is clearly not going to last a decade.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#136

Post by Nextgrid »

Alien1Being wrote: post #45
mortalapeman wrote: post #5

With generated code, the directory structure, interface design and general state management is usually a haphazard mess. Even with the best frontier models. But what really gets me is the model often tries to make assumptions for me that I didn't specify in the prompt. Subtle things like which error states are "oh shit we need to bail" vs "this isn't a deal breaker." Sometimes it will ask, but more often than not it…

Surely this is a solvable problem. If the average, mediocre software developer can address the issue of directory structure, interface design, general state management, edge cases and subtle assumptions it should be possible to train AI systems to address these issues . Software development is not some mystical magical activity. I remember people making similar arguments about autonomous driving...

> directory structure, interface design, general state management,

These are currently problematic due to context length. You should have working memory of the whole codebase layout to decide on a sane architecture, identify opportunities for deduplication/consolidation, etc.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#137

Post by graemep »

mattmanser wrote: post #106
DanielHB wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this sentiment, IKEA furniture is much more sustainable than artisanal furniture. Most of the "back in the day" furniture came from tearing down virgin woods. Sorting + shredding-recycling + making new "cheap particle board crap" furniture takes a lot of energy, but not a lot of non-renewable resources. With increased electrification this problem is being drastically reduced and the wood is sourced fr…

This seems delusional to me, being older and more experienced with how long IKEA stuff actually lasts. 8 years is long for IKEA furniture, usually something has irreplaceablely broken by then. IKEA also refuse to sell you spare parts. Give me real furniture anyday.

Depends on the specific piece of furniture, and how well you treat it. I have had quite mixed experience. Its not going to last like expensive stuff, but its generally far from the worst.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#138

Post by vladvasiliu »

Jensson wrote: post #131
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how many times can you take a piece of Ikea furniture apart and put it back together again? I have friends who have moved apartments with the same Billy bookshelf 2-3 times and if they tried it one more time the thing would collapse. Not to belabor the metaphor as heavily as my friend's Billy, but there's a maintenance corellary to be made here. Most Ikea furniture can be put together once, in one place, and left…

> But how many times can you take a piece of Ikea furniture apart and put it back together again? How many times can you take apart regular furniture and put it back together again? Most furniture doesn't come apart at all, just move the ikea furniture like you move any other furniture don't take it apart every time and you are fine, it would be weaker if it was possible to disassemble it without issue.

While I agree with the sentiment that there are tradeoffs, and I, personally, have a bunch of Ikea furniture that I'm happy with since it does exactly what I need it to, I think "just don't take it apart" doesn't work so well with cheaper pieces.

I had to move an Ikea dresser from one room to the other and back again, and I don't think it particularly enjoyed it. It seemed quite fragile, and I had to pay attention to not twist it too much. Whereas my grandma's furniture, which was much more solidly built, seemed fine during a long-distance move. Ditto for a Besta TV stand, which seems fine if pressure is applied from the top, much less so if I try to lift it or if it's pushed from the side.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#140

Post by sethammons »

user43928 wrote: post #40
hbcdbff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you expect us to take your views on LLM code quality and durability seriously when a) you don’t even look at the code and b) you’ve only been doing this for two months?

I've been working on the app for four months, and I am clearly not talking about code quality. I am talking about product quality and maintainability. Both are more than adequate. I know this because I have worked on it for an estimated 300 hours. Has the author practiced a similar approach for even a week? I doubt it.

2 months simply isn't enough time for evolving system needs. You don't get to know if your code is maintainable until the use cases have expanded and usually other devs will come on board, and what guarantee is there that they will direct the ai the same way? Your core features today may be solid, but expanding and adding cases coupled with debugability is what shows off maintainable code. Two months simply isn't enough time. Two years, maybe. I have maintained the same aggressively growing software from start up to public company to begin acquired. Two months is literally nothing in the maintenance lifecycle
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