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Slop is not necessarily the future

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Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#301

Post by switchbak »

Animats wrote: post #35

Meanwhile, the complexity of the average piece of software is drastically increasing. ... The stats suggest that devs are shipping more code with coding agents. The consequences may already be visible: analysis of vendor status pages [3] shows outages have steadily increased since 2022, suggesting software is becoming more brittle. We've already seen a large-scale AWS outage because of this. It could get much worse.…

I think we're heading for a real crisis here. We've got an imperfect system of constraints and bottlenecks, and we've just eliminated one of the main bottlenecks - the speed at which we can add new code. This just puts so much more strain on the rest of the system, I think the industry is going to have a quick lesson on the non-linear costs of software complexity.

I'm glad to see that the author of the article is putting an emphasis on simplicity here, especially given the nature of their business. Those that fully embrace the "code doesn't matter" approach are in for a world of hurt.

Long-term, I expect there will be more tooling and model advancements to help us in this regard - and there will certainly be a big economic incentive for that soon. But in the meantime it feels like a dam has been breached and we're just waiting for the real effects to become manifest.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#302

Post by tehnub »

mikkupikku wrote: post #226
ryandrake wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be missing the point of the quote. He's not talking about whether it is commonly done. He's talking about the mentality that justifies sacrificing the aesthetic and artistry, in favor of things like "dimensional stability". He is giving a reason why it shouldn't be done, and people can disagree about whether the reason is a good one.

He's saying that carpenters who make nice things wouldn't use a material like that, but they objectively do and this doesn't sacrifice the aesthetic or artistry. He specifically calls out the use of the material in a place it wouldn't be seen as something that the carpenter making beautiful cabinets wouldn't do, but that's actually something they absolutely do. He's trying to argue some other point by way of this ana…

There are plenty of furniture makers that use all hardwood construction. It's just that they charge like $10K USD for a cabinet

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#303

Post by leptons »

farmeroy wrote: post #109
seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

I think developers fall into two camps: 1. you care about shipping working, tested code that solves a specific business/user problem 2. you care about closing tickets that were assigned to you

I think developers fall in to way more than 2 "camps".

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#304

Post by waterTanuki »

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is.

RollerCoaster Tycoon.

> The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. Sure, if you vibe code a massive bug into your product then that'll manifest as an outcome that impacts the user negatively.

People care how fast you're able to ship updates, new features, and bugfixes. If you're working with a pile of vibe-coded spaghetti slop it's going to take longer to deliver these.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#305

Post by tehnub »

solid_fuel wrote: post #182
quantummagic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very useful insight. It nicely identifies part of the reason for the stark bifurcation of opinion on AI. Unfortunately, many of the comments below it are emotional and dismissive, pointing out its explanatory limitations, rather than considering its useful, probative value.

I find most home inspectors fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat the house as a means to an end to make a living space for a person. 2. You treat the building construction itself as your craft, with the house being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about buildings fall into camp #2 where cheap unskilled labor is streamlining a large part of what they considered…

Brilliant

>Sure, if you mess up and one of the houses collapses then that'll manifest as an outcome that impacts the home owner negatively.

lol

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#306

Post by rolandhvar »

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

I mean just look at UV.

Did that guy make it because Rust, and because he's passionate about that sort of thing? Probably.

But it's fucking fast. So did he sell out to OpenAI? Of course he did.

And thusly, both camps.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#307

Post by tokioyoyo »

MrRadar wrote: post #190
mbesto wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> obviously created by people the care deeply about the quality of the product they produce This obviously doesn't represent all of the billions of dollars spent on software like Salesforce, SAP, Realpage, Booking.com, etc. etc. (all notoriously buggy, slow, and complex software). You can't tell me with a straight face that all of the thousands of developers who develop these products/services care deeply about the q…

> This obviously doesn't represent all of the billions of dollars spent on software like Salesforce, SAP, Realpage, Booking.com, etc. etc. (all notoriously buggy, slow, and complex software). You can't tell me with a straight face that all of the thousands of developers who develop these products/services care deeply about the quality of the product. They get real nice paychecks, benefits and put dinner on the table…

Have you seen large consumer products’ codebases?… Companies like Google are tiniest exceptions when it comes to code gatekeeping and quality.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#308

Post by mbesto »

MrRadar wrote: post #204
mbesto wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which might be true, but is totally irrelevant to the OP's comment.

Users care about quality, even if the people buying the software do not. You can't just say "well the market doesn't care about quality" when the market incentives are broken for a paricular type of software. When the market incentives are aligned between users and purchasers (such as when they are the same person) quality tends to become very important for the market viability of software (see Windows in the consume…

> "well the market doesn't care about quality"

You literally just told me the market doesn't care about quality. I don't get what point you're trying to make?

> When the market incentives are aligned between users and purchasers (such as when they are the same person) quality tends to become very important for the market viability of software

Right, but this magical market you're talking about doesn't exist. That's my point.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#309

Post by tokioyoyo »

Ekaros wrote: post #140
nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

Demos might ne nice an flashy. But eventually you actually have to have generally working product. Too many issues with too many annoyances and eventually users of even enterprise software will be heard. Especially so if there is some actual loss of money or data that is not corrected very fast. In the end software is means to the end. And if you do not get to end because software is crap it will be replaced, hopeful…

The argument is “it’s not crap if it works and does what it’s supposed to do relatively well, and it doesn’t matter how it’s written under the hood”.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#310

Post by tokioyoyo »

tabwidth wrote: post #288
Benjammer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the quality really does matter. If this level of quality/rigor does matter for something like a game, do you think the market will enforce this? If low rigor leads to a poor product, won't it sell less than a good product in this market? Shouldn't the market just naturally weed out the AI slop over time, assuming it's true that "quality really does matter"? Or were you thinking about "matter" in some other sense th…

How long does that take though? Technical debt from sloppy code doesn't show up in the product until way later. By the time users notice, the team is already three features deep and can't back out.

All these arguments somehow disregards that we’ve all been adding technical debt left and right, every other day to every single codebase in existence. Humans also write sloppy code.
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