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Stop Slopware

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Re: Stop Slopware

#151

Post by oehpr »

wibbily wrote: post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

I need to say as someone who also really really cares about the craft. About doing things right. LLMs have been a massive boon to me, because they're the only entity in this world that seems willing to work with me to get things right.

If something is working but it is ugly, sketchy, or I feel there may be a more apt abstraction or generalization of the problem, every other human being on the planet has persistently turned that situation into an exhausting argument. If the code works, it works, right? And all this shit I talk about is pointless because it works. And I have to fruitlessly construct an argument that would appeal to someone who cares nothing other than a complete ticket.

LLMs are at least not needlessly combative and incurious as to think that every approach but the first one we try is a pointless waste of time.

Re: Stop Slopware

#152

Post by throwthrowuknow »

simonsarris wrote: post #13

> if you’re doing this for your own learning: you will learn better without AI. This is not the distinction I would want to tell newcomers. AI is extremely good for finding out what the most common practices are for all kinds of situations. That's a powerful learning tool. Besides, learning how to use a tool well (one that we can expect professionals to use) is part of learning. Now most common practices and best pra…

It’s all in how you use it. If you want to learn you can just tell it to walk you through the code or write a tutorial with examples and exercises or give you programming problems to solve or use the socratic method or recommend the best human written tutorials and books or review your code and suggest more idiomatic techniques or help you convert a program from one language or paradigm to another and a million other ways.

I like the AI written tutorial method, both Opus 4.5 and Gemini 3 are good at this. You just have to put the effort in to copytype, make changes, ask questions and put what you’ve learnt into practice. AI code review is also great for discovering alternatives you don’t know about.

Re: Stop Slopware

#153

Post by throwthrowuknow »

Going all in on AI generated code has taught me more about project management than I learned in the last decade. I also have a much better perspective on what it’s like to be a client contracting a developer to build an app for them. The best part is the AI actually follows all of the processes that you ask it to. Today was the first day that I wrote code in over a week and I still ended up asking for some review from Opus and it went perfectly. At this point no one has an excuse for shipping slop if they can afford $20 a month.

Re: Stop Slopware

#154

Post by smolder »

mccoyb wrote: post #89
smolder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs aren't like a screwdriver at all, the analogy doesn't work. I think I was clear. LLMs aren't useful outside the domain of what they were trained on. They are copycats. To really innovate on software design means going outside what has been done before, which an LLM won't help you do.

No, you weren't clear, nor are you correct: you shared FUD about something it seems you have not tried, because testing your claims with a recent agentic system would dispel them. I've had great success teaching Claude Code use DSLs I've created in my research. Trivially, it has never seen exactly these DSLs before -- yet it has correctly created complex programs using those DSLs, and indeed -- they work! Have you ha…

This is desperate rebuttal from ignorance.

My point stands. You haven't innovated, you've just leaned on an LLM to work with your unoriginal DSL. I'm sure it's worth 100 megawatt-hours.

Re: Stop Slopware

#155

Post by nurettin »

wibbily wrote: post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

I've had a two hour long discussion with a super llm about a somewhat complex event loop processing task. It could not manage. I even restarted the session a couple of times. Then I did it manually and showed it a working version using a simple state machine. "That's brilliant!" (no, it wasn't brilliant)

I am really worried for the next generation of programmers fully dependent on llms.

Re: Stop Slopware

#156

Post by port11 »

wibbily wrote: post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

This is a classical, charming take on software developers, but we don't judge most professions that way.

“It bothers me that so many cashiers don't care about the craft of service and payment point connection.”

“It bothers me that so many butchers don't care about the craft of choosing meat cuts and selling meat tailored to the customer.”

We expect of developers craft, passion, after-work commitment, life-long learning, and so on, and so on. Many other professions are free of or lighter on such expectations.

I agree that it's alienating to see sloppy, automated code crop up simply because people want to get paid. Code used to be this cool domain… But I'm not shocked, since our society evolved towards commoditising absolutely everything.

Even thoughtful messages to loved ones are now available through LLM-hallucinated apps. We're done here, pack up your expectation of humanity staying, ahm, human? Disheartening.

Re: Stop Slopware

#157

Post by port11 »

wiether wrote: post #125
wibbily wrote: post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

I used to be intrigued by _software craftsmanship_, but I mainly saw people using it to practice heavy gatekeeping. Be it on the job, in code reviews, in job interviews... Furthermore, given how they behave in a cult-like way, it feels like they are straight-up delusional. People working as consultants for big retail chains, talking all day long about "the craft". Nobody cares. They sell trash. They don't put marble…

The one issue that stands out is that, by optimising for cost and time now, you might build unmaintainable messes for later. Therefore, later the cost and time goes up.

EDIT: child commenter is right, my bad.

Re: Stop Slopware

#158

Post by munksbeer »

wibbily wrote: post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

> It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems.

Why?

Intellectual curiosity is a good thing. When I first went to university, I thought I was going to be a physicist. It turns out my brain was really well wired for programming, being logical, rigorous, particular about detail, I like predictability, not a high risk taker without fully understanding and accepting the risks, etc.

But when I first started off as a programmer, I wrote physics simulations for fun (not work). I'd write little games, I wrote neural nets and fuzzy logic (gives me a chuckle), back in the 90s when the field was new. All of this was "my thing", and I barely cared about the code I wrote to achieve this. I absolutely loved it, because coding was a tool to explore my intellectual curiousity.

I could say the exact opposite, that I feel a bit sad that people care more about the characters they type on a screen than the concepts they explore.

As I morphed into a professional software engineer, I grew to understand the importance of high quality code and engineering (I mean architecture decisions). I have had a long, successful career by refining my craft. I care about the quality I produce for my future self and others, and the success of the product as a result of this quality.

But at the heart, I am still just an intellectually curious person, and one day I may stop working professionally and at that point, I think I'll love using AI to write code and help me explore concepts. I very much look forward to it in fact.

Re: Stop Slopware

#159

Post by munksbeer »

port11 wrote: post #157
wiether wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be intrigued by _software craftsmanship_, but I mainly saw people using it to practice heavy gatekeeping. Be it on the job, in code reviews, in job interviews... Furthermore, given how they behave in a cult-like way, it feels like they are straight-up delusional. People working as consultants for big retail chains, talking all day long about "the craft". Nobody cares. They sell trash. They don't put marble…

The one issue that stands out is that, by optimising for cost and time now , you might build unmaintainable messes for later . Therefore, later the cost and time goes up. EDIT: child commenter is right, my bad.

In the post they already addressed that

"and that won't make you hate yourself if you have to maintain it in a year"

Re: Stop Slopware

#160

Post by [deleted] »

munksbeer wrote: post #159
port11 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one issue that stands out is that, by optimising for cost and time now , you might build unmaintainable messes for later . Therefore, later the cost and time goes up. EDIT: child commenter is right, my bad.

In the post they already addressed that "and that won't make you hate yourself if you have to maintain it in a year"

[deleted]
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