And once you’ve written all these specs you realize it became so slow that it’s faster to do it yourself in editor
at which point you realize you never had a plan written down and you are using the code as a spec
Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
31–40 of 316 posts
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#32Wow - I love programming in YAML! You know what would make this really fun? Sprinkle in some Jinja. Then we'll be cooking with gas.
Exactly. At some point, the specification becomes so complex, it's easier to just write the code yourself.
It's why famously, programmers always say, the code is the documentation, because writing detailed docs is very tedious and nobody wants to do it.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#33I'm still confused as to why folks don't just write executable specs.
Ambiguity is the grease that keeps everything turning.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#34Try openspec: https://github.com/Fission-AI/OpenSpec/blob/main/docs/gettin...
Indeed I have a lot of catch up to do, will spend some time with the popular tools before I go too much further down this road.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#35I'm still confused as to why folks don't just write executable specs.
So basically tests?
Yes, except a test can be turing complete - i.e. code.
An executable spec like gherkin or hitchstory is config - it has no loops or conditionals. There are a number of rarely recognized benefits to this.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#36Grindmaxxing, a long form blog post that is actually just an advertisement for his website.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#37YAML is one of the worst technologies ever invented, it has more warts than features. One of the benefits of LLMs is that they can write YAML for me, wherever I am forced to use it.
Otherwise, I like the idea of machine-readable specs.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#38[deleted]
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#39Yesterday I heard about lat.md [1] which seems to have similar ideas about annotating code with spec refs. I now need to try them both. [1] https://www.lat.md/
Oh cool, thanks for sharing. LLMs tend to adopt these patterns on their own, so I'm sure my ideas are far from unique.
Re: Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML
#40Author here, if you don't want to read all that, I'll post one excerpt that I think sums it up nicely: > My point is, the spec must live somewhere, even if you don’t write it down. The spec is what you want the software to be. It often exists only in your head or in conversations. You and your team and your business will always care what the spec says, and that’s never going to change. So you’re better off writing it…
Great idea -- just one suggestion if you want it to catch on: perform some IncelCultureMinning on the nomenclature.
You probably don't want people associating your work with abusing crystal meth and hitting yourself in the face with a hammer.
For anyone missing the reference, SNL has a pretty good explainer: