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There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

jacob.gold

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Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#171

Post by hombre_fatal »

chrisweekly wrote: post #156
hombre_fatal wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Claude model=fable effort=high to write most of my initial plans, especially the hard things like re-architecture. I recommend putting time into figuring out the "soft infrastructure" of your projects, usually things you've never been arsed to do in your life (like me until this year). Start with a docs/*.md folder that you link to from AGENTS.md where you can document things that would be important for you, an…

Great advice and PoV. One nit: I recommend against the filename "DESIGN.md" for architectural invariants, in light of the emerging use of that filename for UI / design system / CSS tokens (colors, fonts, typography, etc). See https://designmd.ai/ for examples.

Good point. "decisions.md" is a good starting spot.

The point, of course, is that you need some way to document decisions and pivots and eurekas (including rejected ones) over the lifetime of the project. It's a key part of invariant discovery and then committing to them.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#172

Post by echelon »

blanched wrote: post #168
echelon wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to help you by sharing and you're choosing to be dark and gloomy about it. I can only help so much. What you did a few years ago will likely dry up as a source of supporting you and your family. There is all kinds of new value to create in the world. Find the calling that is meaningful to you. Go cure cancer instead of plumbing widgets and wizbobs at 100k QPS active-active five nines SLA. Just don't stay a…

I didn’t assume, I asked. But you’re being particularly condescending, so I guess that’s where we’re at. “Directly incorporates” is pretty vague and still seems like it’s financial, but good for you. I hope it’s something that assists artists and doesn’t replace them. Personally it’s hard for me to find meaning in something like that, given the thread’s context of “I don’t even look at the code”. What craft was done?…

I wasn't being condescending, that's just text's inability to encode delivery.

You don't look at the bytecode you produce. You don't know 99.99% of your stack. You are a master of abstraction and you always have been. This is just a different flavor of the same recipe.

You've got a tool that will let you execute at greater breadth than ever before. Like what it must've been like for the very first engineers who had access to the internet or the first libraries or package managers.

Job flux is demand finding new salients. Employment hasn't dipped as far as I can tell. There are more exciting opportunities now than ever before, you just have to step into it.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#173

Post by blanched »

echelon wrote: post #172
blanched wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t assume, I asked. But you’re being particularly condescending, so I guess that’s where we’re at. “Directly incorporates” is pretty vague and still seems like it’s financial, but good for you. I hope it’s something that assists artists and doesn’t replace them. Personally it’s hard for me to find meaning in something like that, given the thread’s context of “I don’t even look at the code”. What craft was done?…

I wasn't being condescending, that's just text's inability to encode delivery. You don't look at the bytecode you produce. You don't know 99.99% of your stack. You are a master of abstraction and you always have been. This is just a different flavor of the same recipe. You've got a tool that will let you execute at greater breadth than ever before. Like what it must've been like for the very first engineers who had a…

I'll admit, this is a heated topic, and heated topics rarely go well over text.

I apologize for misreading and pettily being condescending "in return".

I agree with the way you phrased it here.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#174

Post by herewulf »

lelanthran wrote: post #102
jatora wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continual gains that have not stopped and there is clearly much gain to be had even if model intelligence stopped scaling. I find it borderline nasty how so many people are positively hoping for a bubble to pop or an AI winter to come so that they can feel like they can cope with the evolving world...despite all evidence to the contrary that any of these things will happen very soon at all.

Speak to young folk. My numerous nieces and nephews use ChatGPT all the time and yet they still hate it. They are contemplating a lifetime of devalued skills, because they can see that prompting a model is an unskilled task.

There's at least skill needed to recognize the BS in the answers.

I've been prompting a bit on a hobby project that sort of boils down to MechE. It's far from my domain of expertise but I've recognized enough BS and been sent down some rabbit holes all too frequently to discover the BS at the end.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#175

Post by shimman »

gulugawa wrote: post #151
shimman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty impressive. I always like bespoke web utilities tailored for specific dev purposes. What approach are you taking? I'm about to start a mithril.js project, was always under the impression it was the most efficient approach. Are you doing something similar or different or are you referring to WASM?

I use web components with a render function to generate HTML and templates to provide fine-grained reactivity. Targeted re-rendering of items with relevant state changes makes performance significantly faster and also makes forms easier to write. Here is an example of a template used to render a list of events. const EventItem = () => { EventItem.eventTime = (eventData) =>{ if(eventData.isRecurring){ return `${eventD…

Do you prefer frameworks like lit to generate your web components? I always felt like the base APIs were okay-ish but I haven't really investigated web components much. Like honestly once maybe 4 years ago and it was for a POC at work.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#176

Post by jatora »

lelanthran wrote: post #167
jatora wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest that they need better education then. Prompting isn't unskilled. Neither was googling before that. There is critical thinking involved, and the method in which you utilize the outputs that matters as well. Yes skills are going to be devalued, but that isn't happening yet for the vast majority. So its not really apt for them to think this way.

> I'd suggest that they need better education then. I'd suggest you need better education. > Prompting isn't unskilled. That's not what the AI firms are selling.

Ah good well thought out points im really learning something

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#177

Post by gulugawa »

shimman wrote: post #175
gulugawa wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use web components with a render function to generate HTML and templates to provide fine-grained reactivity. Targeted re-rendering of items with relevant state changes makes performance significantly faster and also makes forms easier to write. Here is an example of a template used to render a list of events. const EventItem = () => { EventItem.eventTime = (eventData) =>{ if(eventData.isRecurring){ return `${eventD…

Do you prefer frameworks like lit to generate your web components? I always felt like the base APIs were okay-ish but I haven't really investigated web components much. Like honestly once maybe 4 years ago and it was for a POC at work.

I'm using a framework built from scratch with vanilla JS. It includes logic for writing templates.

I plan to publish an updated version soon.

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#178

Post by thin_carapace »

jatora wrote: post #159
thin_carapace wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

additional to the great examples already given, anyone in residential proximity to a compute centre is recieving noise + environment pollution. resultant destruction of sleep and air/water quality is massively detrimental to qol. the joes who net benefit from ai detriments seem to live far away from the consequences. I shall ask another way, how do the average joe's ai benefits outweigh his ai detriments?

Data center complaints existed long before AI. The stories you read about neighborhood issues are by and large for pre-existing data centers. This is not an AI issue

I specifically mentioned the other arguments because I didn't want to repeat them, I'm not going to repeat them

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#179

Post by gulugawa »

shimman wrote: post #163
chrismorgan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely seriously, and I don’t think this is particularly controversial: outperforming React is not impressive. React was never particularly good at performance—VDOM is fundamentally overhead, and there are a variety of faster and lighter techniques employed by various competitors, and even among VDOM libraries it’s not as fast as it could be. React sold itself as fast initially, but what it was faster than (rebui…

I don't disagree, I'm always curious if there are new techniques out there to adopt. It's just hard to find out about them because as you said, sometimes they are bespoke single use tools that aren't easily shared/discussed about.

This site has excellent articles on learning to use native web technologies with minimal dependencies. I've found them to be useful resources when learning how to create web components.

https://gomakethings.com/guides/?filter=html

Re: There's no such thing as a small software team anymore

#180

Post by jcelerier »

sokoloff wrote: post #135
jcelerier wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK, but why would I want to run more agents? So I can be more productive? What does this productivity lead to? software used outside of nerd niches? photoshop, canva, clickup, after effects and unreal engine over feh, imagemagick, impressive, emacs org mode, ffmpeg CLI and pico-8?

While I’m sure there’s a sliver of usage outside, I’d wager most emacs org mode usage is firmly inside what the average human would consider a nerd niche.

well yes, that's what i'm saying. most people that interact with a computer use notion, a small percentage obsidian, and a fraction of that emacs org mode or other similar tools. I use zim-wiki but I don't expect most people to do the same, just like I don't expect most musicians to learn lilypond
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