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Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

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Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#201

Post by 8note »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #57
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…

The problem with this analogy (actually one of many) is that most people can make do with a cabinet that is literally identical to everyone else's. IKEA is great for that. If you want software that is literally identical to what someone else is using then you don't need AI. You need a license to that software! That is just the traditional software model. AI gives software that is bespoke with hundreds of decisions ma…

> If you want software that is literally identical to what someone else is using then you don't need AI. You need a license to that software! That is just the traditional software model.

isnt this the software model that AI is gonna kill over time? You dont need to pay a recurring license fee when you vibe code up a free tier alternative and never do maintenance on it

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#202

Post by 8note »

jayd16 wrote: post #181
LtWorf wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Doesn't last through undergrad in most cases. Mostly because you move a lot.

undergrads are also drunk and partying a lot.

the drywall also doesnt survive angry drunk undergrads punching through the wall, or practicing sports inside

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#203

Post by 8note »

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.

dont they just give the spare parts away for free?

just show up at the help desk saying your box was missing a few pieces and theyll give you more

... i have ikea furniture thats ~20 years old, still kicking

the ikea cabinet set is ~25?

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#204

Post by 8note »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #160
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day artisans took care of horses and new have cheapened ourselves to use stinky cars. Back in the day we built computers with relays by hand, now we have cheapened ourselves to use weird semiconductors and use inefficient python code instead of highly optimized hand crafted assembly. Maybe we should go back to hunting and gathering?

Typical sentiment I see that completely lacks any nuance. For one car vs IKEA are two completely different beasts entirely. A car opened up new avenues that a human could never do before its invention. This itself makes it a far more worthy invention than most. IKEA cheapened stuff and gave low quality cookie cutter furniture to everyone. Was this really a great thing, that propelled humanity forward? It’s also not l…

ikea made furniture easy to move, and easy to get furniture you actually want, vs being stuck with old stuff where the drawers are all stuck and its too heavy to move.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#205

Post by tingletech »

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…

> If I don't have a fully kitted out test suit and a good type checker to verify the final product against

I have a template I use with generated python projects that sets up all the test info first.

https://github.com/brian-learns/testafize

I start the coding session in a directory where I've already set this up and maybe drafted a README.md, and usually it just automatically starts running the `make check` without prompting.

I've also used it for migrating old code. I put an old python 2 script in src and asked it get make check to work, and it even added test on its own initiative.

I'm mostly using Qwen3.6 (now Qwen3.7) running on my DGX Spark in llama.cpp using different harnesses, or the default model on opencode.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#206

Post by 8note »

Alien1Being wrote: post #141
samiv wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But.. Most enterprise software written by your colleagues is mostly cheap particle board crap. At least IKEA furniture is usually reliable and does not fail catastrophicaly unlike the crappy bug ridden enterprise software we all have deal with...Jira, SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, etc... Mature AI will be better than the average mediocrity that calls himself a software developer.

the "code isnt the hard part" says that the quality of the code might be higher, but itll be just as buggy because the hard part was always about communicating the right thing to build

code written by ai that the end user cant complain about or communicate their complaints about will be just as bad as hand crafted artisan code that the end user cant communicate complaints about or influence

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#207

Post by rightbyte »

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…

I move furniture in one piece if possible to fit the door. The screw inserts and plugs etc wear out fast if reused.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#208

Post by teunispeters »

mstank wrote: post #70

I have an open question for software engineers out there: As someone that has never studied CS but has written basic code most of my life (accelerated now with AI), where is the best place to learn software engineering fundamentals?

Learn more engineering, any structured engineering. Electronics is particularly applicable, but hardly the only field that fits. Learning to find sources of error, how to handle precision and the systems of organization - all help.

I'm self-taught - could never afford much university... but I worked "odd jobs", such as assistant jobs in land surveying, welding, and electronics - and those all opened my eyes to a lot more. (I do have some university though, as well as a lot of experience... every time I line up to go back to learn more, I end up working instead, for a job I enjoy).

Oh yeah, a lot of basic engineering texts are online, or in libraries. Check them out if you can.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#209

Post by theteapot »

nsingh2 wrote: post #195
theteapot wrote: post #8

> It helps to know that LLMs don’t “reason”. They predict .. Semantics. Prediction is the training objective. The ability to reason can be, and very arguably is, an emergent property of that.

I've never found these discussions to be all that useful, because it's hard to define what conditions are sufficient to say something is "thinking" or "reasoning". It just ends up being circular and metaphysical arguments. That being said, current generation LLMs do have issue, it's more productive to talk about those and their impact on real tasks (long term memory, continual learning, tokenization, context rot, rev…

AKA semantics.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#210

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

graemep wrote: post #124
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…

> 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…

> 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.

The rest of the furniture didn't last long enough to be inherited.

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