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The rise of industrial software

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Re: The rise of industrial software

#111

Post by jeltz »

zkmon wrote: post #83
bodegajed wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

code has no use-value. it is like being a baker in an island. the value comes from its user base.

User base comes from the value you provide. Value comes from the product features. Features come from code. If code is easy, anyone with 10K bucks in their pocket can provide those features and product. The only thing missing is, is the product battle-tested? That fortunately remains out of reach for AI.

I would say unfortunately out of reach since so far it seems AI will mostly fill out world with bad code which is not battle tested.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#112

Post by furyofantares »

WJW wrote: post #47

This essay, like so many others, mistakes the task of "building" software with the task of "writing" software. Anyone in the world can already get cheap, mass-produced software to do almost anything they want their computer to do. Compilers spit out new build of any program on demand within seconds, and you can usually get both source code and pre-compiled copies over the internet. The "industrial process" (as TFA pu…

> It's like thinking the greatest barrier to producing the next great Russian literary novel is not speaking Russian.

The article is very clearly not saying anything like that. It's saying the greatest barrier to making throwaway comments on Russian social media is not speaking Russian.

Roughly the entire article is about LLMs making it much cheaper to make low quality software. It's not about masterpieces.

And I think it's generally true of all forms of generative AI, what these things excel at the most is producing things that weren't valuable enough to produce before. Throwaway scripts for some task you'd just have done manually before is a really positive example that probably many here are familiar with.

But making stuff that wasn't worth making before isn't necessarily good! In some cases it is, but it really sucks if we have garbage blog posts and readmes and PRs flooding our communication channels because it's suddenly cheaper to produce than whatever minimal value someone gets out of hoisting it on us.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#113

Post by kj4211cash »

Havoc wrote: post #107
physicsguy wrote: post #98

I've just done my first almost fully vibe coded hobby project from start to near completion, a village history website with a taxonomy, and it's taken so much poking and prodding and cajoling to get the software to do exactly what I want it to do. Having built plenty of production stuff, I know what I want it to look like and the data model was really clear, yet even trying every trick in the book to constrain them,…

> you still needed the captain driving the ship. The question is more what becomes of all the rowers when you’re switching from captain + 100 rowers to captain + steam engine They’re not all going to get their own boat and captain hat

But were there ever 100 "rowers"? In this case, the commenter would have developed the website him- or herself instead of using AI. And it would have taken a little longer but probably been higher quality. In my experience, most developers are already capable captains and most of their job is "captaining." One of their main complaints is managers who treat them like rowers. AI just shifts what it means to captain?

Re: The rise of industrial software

#114

Post by te7447 »

zx8080 wrote: post #101

> This website uses anonymous cookies to enhance the user experience. This sounds weird, or wrong. Does anonymous stats need cookies at all?

If you want to track how many times users revisit the site, you could do that anonymously by setting a visit counter cookie, e.g. VISITS: 1, VISITS: 2, etc. This would track the user over different IPs, but since the cookie only has a counter, it doesn't tell you if two people with "VISITS: 2" set is the same user.

That's the first example I can think of off the top of my head.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#115

Post by pydry »

cryptica wrote: post #81
pydry wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was already true before LLMs. "Artisinal software" was never the norm. The tsunami of crap just got a bit bigger. Unlike clothing, software always scaled. So, it's a bit wrongheaded to assume that the new economics would be more like the economics of clothing after mass production. An "artisanal" dress still only fits one person. "Artisanal" software has always served anywhere between zero people and millions. L…

Agreed, software was always kind of mediocre. This is expected given the massive first mover advantage effect. Quality is irrelevant when speed to market is everything.

Unlike speed to market it doesnt manifest in an obvious way but I've watched several companies lose significant market share because they didnt appreciate software quality.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#116

Post by gverrilla »

Havoc wrote: post #107
physicsguy wrote: post #98

I've just done my first almost fully vibe coded hobby project from start to near completion, a village history website with a taxonomy, and it's taken so much poking and prodding and cajoling to get the software to do exactly what I want it to do. Having built plenty of production stuff, I know what I want it to look like and the data model was really clear, yet even trying every trick in the book to constrain them,…

> you still needed the captain driving the ship. The question is more what becomes of all the rowers when you’re switching from captain + 100 rowers to captain + steam engine They’re not all going to get their own boat and captain hat

They could do a revolution. 100 rowers vs 1 captain - easy. Labor vs capital.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#117

Post by ReptileMan »

nchmy wrote: post #105
ReptileMan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic growth tracks almost 100% with energy consumption. The earth at night map is quite telling on the matter.

Newsflash! Less happens while people are asleep! Correlation doesnt say anything about the sensitivity/scaling. (i recognize that my original comment didnt quite make this point, though the correlation is definitely not 100%, so that point does still stand) can you note the difference between the earth being lit by torches, candles, kerosene lamps and incandescent bulbs, versus LED lights? LED isnt glowing harder, it…

Facts are that you can absolutely tell how developed a region is by looking from above. And that there hasn't been a year in which the humanity has used less energy than the previous one and grown.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#118

Post by anthk »

philipallstar wrote: post #3

These damn articles. Software moved into an industrial revolution when you could write in a high level language, and not in assembly. This has already happened .

Partially, but no. First:

- Other input that a deck of cards. Terminals and teletypes were a revolution.

- Assembly was much better than hardware switches.

- Also, a proper keyboard input against some "monitor" software was zillions better than, again, a deck of cards/hardware toggles. When you can have a basic line basic editor and dump your changes in a paper tape or print your output you have now live editing instead of suffering batch jobs.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#119

Post by anthk »

baq wrote: post #6
philipallstar wrote: post #3

These damn articles. Software moved into an industrial revolution when you could write in a high level language, and not in assembly. This has already happened .

You either see what codex and opus are capable of and extrapolate the trendline or you don’t; the author clearly saw and extrapolated. Not that I disagree: I’m on record agreeing with the article months ago. Folks in labs probably seen it coming for years. Yes we’ve seen major improvements in software development velocity - libraries, OSes, containers, portable bytecodes - but I’m afraid we’ve seen nothing yet. Claud…

Portable bytecodes predate Windows and Macintosh, and maybe DOS too. (The Z Machine).

Re: The rise of industrial software

#120

Post by yobbo »

bsenftner wrote: post #104
WJW wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I read the article. I still think it's incorrect. Most software (especially by usage) is already not artisanal. You get the exact same browser, database server and (whatsapp/signal/telegram/whatever) messenger client as basically everyone else. Those are churned out by the millions from a common blueprint and designed by teams and teams of highly skilled specialists using specialized tooling, not so different fr…

I think the author of the post envisions more code authoring automation, more generated code/test/deployment, exponentially more. To the degree what we have now would be "quaint", as he says. Your point that most software uses the same browsers, databases, tooling and internal libraries is a weakness, a sameness that can be exploited by current AI, to push that automation capability much further. Hell, why even bothe…

LLMs produce human readable output because they learn from human readable input. It's a feature. It allows it to be much less precise than byte code, for example, which wouldn't help at all.
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