Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

Post by preg_match » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

DanielHB wrote: post #98

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…

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…

Post by danielbln » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

slopinthebag wrote: post #168

danielbln wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the reasoning in synaptic transmission?

This is just pure unbridled reductionism. "Show me a single atom in the human body that is 'alive'. You can't? Therefore we're all zombies...." Reasoning is an emergent property of complex systems. Prediction is not. Thus you cannot claim reasoning drives prediction.

Post by RALaBarge » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #51

But do the same SWE fundamentals apply if the one doing the programming is many times smarter than us?

Post by spacemanspiff01 » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 4:42 PM UTC

mekoka wrote: post #162

brabel wrote: post #62

> Making software debuggable, maintainable, layered, and composable – that’s still quite a trick. Quite a lot of that work requires extensive, thoughtful reasoning. And that’s where the LLM’s today, even the leading edge of the “capability” from frontier models, fall short. It’s been my quest during my career to figure out what is maintainable software, what is composable or not, and how the two things, and many othe…

> If your goal is to take over the market quick, as many here would like, maintainability is a very low priority aspect of your code base. Is it? How long do you expect to keep your momentum after "taking over the market"? Anecdata time. I once joined a 3 year old project that had ground itself to a near halt with this philosophy. The project's lead seemed almost allergic to the word "refactoring". It had accrued so…

Post by jayd16 » Sun, Aug 16, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #76

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…

However, Ikea furniture does not tend to collapse a critical moment 90 days after it's been put together because it was unforeseen that the cup you sat on the table would be green, which it wasn't designed to account for. Software isn't furniture, in other words.