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Domain expertise has always been the real moat

brethorsting.com

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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#171

Post by michaelchisari »

fragmede wrote: post #151
michaelchisari wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. At some point of complexity, building it yourself is faster, better and (as we're finding out) cheaper. And more fun, although that varies person to person. Wrestling with a code generator also creates a sunk cost fallacy where progress grinds to a halt but you still try and use the tools to fix the problems the tools created. Or you go in and fix things yourself, in a codebase you don't truly understand.…

Who's got better marketing? Is it even a product that customers care about rock solid and performant? Which ones cheaper and has the least friction to getting started? Which one's CEO golfs with your company's CEO? Time and time again, the market proves worse is better, from the format wars of the 80's and 90's, to Microsoft Windows still being dominant (and oh yeah, Teams). Sometimes quality does win, but if being b…

My comment was more "all things being equal."

Though the market so far has had a lower limit on "worse". We're finding out how low we can go before consumers start valuing quality again.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#172

Post by dominotw »

spkm wrote: post #107
toastmaster11 wrote: post #62

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really. Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable,…

Remember the OOP Hype 20 years ago? I'm still cleaning shit up from then in our codebase when everyone used patterns after skimming through the GoF book without even knowing why .... My prediction is in 20 years I will clean up the shit that was co-authored by Claude ... https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@JeremiahFieldhaven/116654345...

my roommate at the time was trying to implment all the patterns from gof book at work. it was ridiculous but hype was ridiculous.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#173

Post by brandensilva »

jaggederest wrote: post #64
azuanrb wrote: post #47

I recently reviewed an app built mostly with vibe coding. The owner said it was almost ready to launch and just needed a quick check. After looking through it, the database design was a mess. Some features worked, some didn’t. I explained the missing pieces and why things were breaking. Like OP said, he’s the domain expert. I used billions of tokens last month alone. The tools are getting better fast. But giving AI t…

Where I am headed, I think, is to basically be a platform engineer. The job is to create the guardrails, validation, prompt library, and both agent and manual reviews; that keeps the domain experts safe when they start using coding agents. It's a little bit like being T2/T3 customer support [or support engineer], but internal. You're there to catch the dangerous spots, the weird edge cases, and to make sure that ever…

Eventually infrastructure will be more simple to orchestrate too without faults I suspect from well developed devops harnesses. The risk and scale companies are willing to accept will still fall on humans for some time even then. I don't see most people vibe coding a million user app that has deeper needs than the basics we see now.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#174

Post by dominotw »

mindcrime wrote: post #149
awesome_dude wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OOP and GoF are not the same thing - conflating the two has been the biggest mistake everyone has made (detractors and proponents alike)

And there's nothing "wrong" with the GoF Patterns per-se. The issue was always people applying them blindly without understanding why (or more to the point, "if") they were needed. Once writing code filled with patterns became "the thing you do"... all bets were off. :-(

I remember putting stuff like this on my resume "developed X using visitor pattern" . ppl would ask "what is your favourite design pattern" in interviews. lmao.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#175

Post by dominotw »

slashdave wrote: post #122
toastmaster11 wrote: post #62

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really. Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable,…

> nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? I appreciate the frustration, but some of us are actually successfully using these tools.

you completely misread that statement

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#176

Post by lelandfe »

esikich wrote: post #162
FireCrack wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the purposes of chess the domain knowledge is the game rules. And from this pov there is really not much to describe, knowing en-passant exists is the peak of domain knowledge. The other things you describe, such as endgame tables, are really more related to the domain of chess-computing, a subdomain of algorithms, and likely something you exceed your friend's knowledge in. Getting to a high rank in chess isn't a…

I don't know how you can say application and experience isn't domain knowledge. If it isn't, I have no idea wtf we are talking about and I'll have to accuse you of moving goalposts.

You use websites a lot.

Should AI make you really good at frontend development?

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#178

Post by fruit2020 »

jaggederest wrote: post #166
ryan_n wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard for many devs it replaced an IDE... I still use one myself, but I've a lot of people don't anymore.

Basically IDE free since May 2025. I actually reinstalled vscode when setting up a new machine and I think I've launched it twice? cc -> local automated testing -> github -> PR -> heavy integration tests -> review (github ui, +/-) -> manual test locally -> merge -> deploy -> manual test remotely -> synthetic user testing -> repeat

Do you not need to use the debugger sometimes? Or can cc debug by itself

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#179

Post by onebluecloud »

simonw wrote: post #128
toastmaster11 wrote: post #62

How much pontificating needs to be done before people acknowledge nobody has any idea what to do with AI on an individual level? First being good developer and learning how to use AI was sufficient, next it was being able to design architecture, then it was “taste” that made all the difference and now being an expert in the domain is the only thing that matters really. Until AI is basically in a stable, predictable,…

An idea that's beginning to solidify for me is that AI tools make software development harder . It's harder because they dramatically raise the bar for what's possible to do. An individual developer can take on significantly more challenging projects now, because the ultimate constraint has always been time and AI can help you get more done in the time available. But the stuff you can get done with that time is a who…

[flagged]

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#180

Post by simonw »

fruit2020 wrote: post #178
jaggederest wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically IDE free since May 2025. I actually reinstalled vscode when setting up a new machine and I think I've launched it twice? cc -> local automated testing -> github -> PR -> heavy integration tests -> review (github ui, +/-) -> manual test locally -> merge -> deploy -> manual test remotely -> synthetic user testing -> repeat

Do you not need to use the debugger sometimes? Or can cc debug by itself

Coding agents can use debuggers if they need to.

From what I've seen they're more likely to run a python -c "import your_code; your_code.do_stuff()" experiment to figure out what's going on though.

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