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Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

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Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#261

Post by HappMacDonald »

zer00eyz wrote: post #116
quietbritishjim wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this analogy (actually one of many) is that most people can make do with a cabinet that is literally identical to everyone else's. IKEA is great for that. If you want software that is literally identical to what someone else is using then you don't need AI. You need a license to that software! That is just the traditional software model. AI gives software that is bespoke with hundreds of decisions ma…

> If you want software that is literally identical ... If it's a throwaway script, that's fine (and I don't mean to undersell this - this is a huge application). That is the application. AppleScript, VB script, IFTT - and how many drag and drop dev tools has the industry built that were supposed to be for average office workers? Programers are like master carpenters, and the debates we keep having sum up to joinery a…

it's ~~delivering on~~ jumping on the bandwagon of the promise of all those scripting languages that were supposed to help office drones.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#262

Post by HappMacDonald »

al_borland wrote: post #212
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…

Expectations of society have changed. This cannot be discounted. That old furniture was also expensive. A family would save up and buy a piece, use it their whole life, and often pass it on to children or other family members. These days, with IKEA, Wayfair, etc, people throw out and get all new furniture every time they move, or even just to refresh a space. They do this because the furniture is cheap. If they saved…

Genuine question: but are there still people eating meals in a home dining room in the 2020s?

Or is this just inertia of expectation from the 20th century from folk who expect "well that's just what you do" even though their dining room tables are presently covered in unrelated "temporarily put there" items?

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#263

Post by HappMacDonald »

eudamoniac wrote: post #227
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…

> Back in the day furniture was artisanal and hand made yet people were able to afford and have it. I'm pretty sure this is not correct. "Back in the day" artisanal solid wood furniture was so expensive that you would buy it once and keep it your entire life and then your children would use it after you die for their entire life. It was not even the same ballpark of price.

But it may have been after amortization.

The conceit is similar to "ordinary plates vs paper plates".

Nobody is arguing that a single ordinary plate is "cheaper" than as single paper plate, but one can still argue about how TCO of a set of ordinary plates vs constantly buying a stream of new paper ones just to throw them away after each use.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#264

Post by eudamoniac »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #263
eudamoniac wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the day furniture was artisanal and hand made yet people were able to afford and have it. I'm pretty sure this is not correct. "Back in the day" artisanal solid wood furniture was so expensive that you would buy it once and keep it your entire life and then your children would use it after you die for their entire life. It was not even the same ballpark of price.

But it may have been after amortization. The conceit is similar to "ordinary plates vs paper plates". Nobody is arguing that a single ordinary plate is "cheaper" than as single paper plate, but one can still argue about how TCO of a set of ordinary plates vs constantly buying a stream of new paper ones just to throw them away after each use.

Ikea furniture doesn't just break, usually. You can have the same Ikea furniture for decades. Even if it did though, you can also still buy the solid wood Amish furniture for a reasonable price if you're intending to keep it your entire life. A big Amish couch is ~$5k on the high end. A big Ikea couch is $1-2k, which people can and do buy multiple times.

It's just that people expect that they should be able to replace their furniture every five years on whims, and it also be high quality, and it also be cheap. That's their problem.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#265

Post by hsn915 »

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.

Your comment was reductionist

> Where is the reasoning in linear regression?

The comment you are replying to was meant to expose you to your own reductionism.

Re: Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

#266

Post by ChrisGreenHeur »

mrob wrote: post #81
ChrisGreenHeur wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay let’s lock ourselves into the formal verification toolsets, so that we can never use new language features again.

Yes. Correct software is more important than developer convenience.

Business value is more important than correctness
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