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It used to be hard

praf.me

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Re: It used to be hard

#31

Post by qsort »

simonw wrote: post #21

If you're not finding it hard to write software any more, write more ambitious software . I'm taking on massively more ambitious projects than I was just a year ago, and it's taking every inch of my skill and experience to do that. Building software feels harder now, and I'm really enjoying it.

Agreed, I don't know if it's going to stay like this forever, but right now, if anything, the difference is amplified. You can make unbelivable stuff happen through the sheer power of knowing what you're doing.

Re: It used to be hard

#32

Post by kukkeliskuu »

simonw wrote: post #21

If you're not finding it hard to write software any more, write more ambitious software . I'm taking on massively more ambitious projects than I was just a year ago, and it's taking every inch of my skill and experience to do that. Building software feels harder now, and I'm really enjoying it.

I feel the same. More projects, more ambitious projects. I would have not been able to even imagine sone of the things I am building now, not to talk about implementhing them alone.

Re: It used to be hard

#33

Post by hugeBirb »

What type of applications are y'all seeing from LLMs? Anecdotally the only thing that has changed for me is the ability to output more code. That's not software. My coworker is a 10x vibe-coder and his flagship application is held together with brittle shell scripts, a sloppy codebase, bad abstractions, piles of markdown files and an ouroboros of generated tests. This is not software. This is just held together with duct tape and a prayer. Although this guy doesn't have any traditional background but still, if LLM generated coding agents were so good even a simpleton like himself should be able to create a miraculous piece of software, right?

Re: It used to be hard

#34

Post by LPisGood »

hugeBirb wrote: post #33

What type of applications are y'all seeing from LLMs? Anecdotally the only thing that has changed for me is the ability to output more code. That's not software. My coworker is a 10x vibe-coder and his flagship application is held together with brittle shell scripts, a sloppy codebase, bad abstractions, piles of markdown files and an ouroboros of generated tests. This is not software. This is just held together with…

Software has, with precious few exceptions, almost always been held together with duct tape and a prayer.

Re: It used to be hard

#36

Post by randysalami »

simonw wrote: post #21

If you're not finding it hard to write software any more, write more ambitious software . I'm taking on massively more ambitious projects than I was just a year ago, and it's taking every inch of my skill and experience to do that. Building software feels harder now, and I'm really enjoying it.

Yes! And more projects. And you have the freedom to try and fail.

Was thinking of a comparison, cars are faster than walking. Imagine saying, no I prefer only walking. It is healthier than sitting in a car and your legs will atrophy. That is very much true (and we can see the consequences in car dominated societies). Nevertheless, for many industries cars are very important. You don’t say, I would rather carry all these pallets by hand rather than use a forklift.

LLMs are similar in my mind. They turbocharge your output in all senses but is less holistic than hand-coding. Like cars, you are making a trade off but I don’t think it’s fully a replacement. We still walk with cars in our lives. And we don’t eschew cars because they are “worse” for you than walking. We adapt and make tradeoffs

Re: It used to be hard

#37

Post by Taikonerd »

> Turning this essay into a song in the style of 2000's Hip Hop? It used to be hard

Have you listened to the song he links? It's very convincing. If you were just casually listening to it in the grocery store, you wouldn't notice it was made by AI.

Re: It used to be hard

#38

Post by cybrox »

LPisGood wrote: post #34
hugeBirb wrote: post #33

What type of applications are y'all seeing from LLMs? Anecdotally the only thing that has changed for me is the ability to output more code. That's not software. My coworker is a 10x vibe-coder and his flagship application is held together with brittle shell scripts, a sloppy codebase, bad abstractions, piles of markdown files and an ouroboros of generated tests. This is not software. This is just held together with…

Software has, with precious few exceptions, almost always been held together with duct tape and a prayer.

The issue is not duct tape, the issue is having someone you can rely on to know what to tape.

Re: It used to be hard

#39

Post by rembal »

It's maybe much easier to create code, but it's still hard to create good software, and for the next few years we have a monumental challenge of figuring out how does one create good software when cost of code is approaching zero. It will be harder to decide what to build (or what to not build), increase the velocity, even if only for infosec patching, make use of increased velocity for features, massively increase experimenting capacity, and close the biggest loop. Even the best teams now are barely scratching the surface of what tomorrow brings, and it's super exciting, interesting and definitely not easy. It will be hard, but not in the part that was hard before.

Re: It used to be hard

#40

Post by danielvaughn »

What will always be hard and useful is to observe people, find a problem they haven't solved, and then solve that problem for them. AI has not, and will not, make that easier or less useful.
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