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Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

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Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#381

Post by lelanthran »

somenameforme wrote: post #361
jaggederest wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee is a good metaphor here too, because bad technique can ruin a good steak just as surely as good coffee. "knows how to use a meat thermometer and reverse sear" describes like 10% of the population or less, same with coffee - there are people who use a bad grinder and a not-regularly-cleaned Mr. Coffee with good beans and get gas station coffee, and there are people out there making solidly B+ class coffee using…

I'd bring the cheapo French press kit it into the A- domain once you appreciate the number one trick to making good coffee: DON'T BOIL THE WATER. Water that is hot, but well below boiling brings out the flavor of the beans a million times more than boiling water. Get a glass kettle, and turn it off when you start to get some decent bubble action on the bottom. Once you get that down, zomg - a French press with even t…

> DON'T BOIL THE WATER. Water that is hot, but well below boiling

"Boiling" differs in temperature from place to place.

Mineral content of water, altitude makes a large difference.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#383

Post by devsda »

CBLT wrote: post #41
xtajv wrote: post #12

I do not appreciate when authors use the royal "we" to speak for all software engineers when admitting to low quality-control standards. I suspect that it is an attempt to broach an uncomfortable topic through vulnerable self-disclosure, but we need to be serious about admitting when there is a problem somewhere. "Bugs" are not any more cute or fuzzy or entertaining or harmless than the engine "gremlins" that haunted…

Article aside, I generally always use the "we" pronoun at work when writing prose. Saying "I" feels too adversarial when talking about negative effects, or too self-aggrandizing when talking about positive effects. For example: "We discovered a bug shipped at the end of the merge window, so we will restart validation with the rollback applied." I think in school they say the business-safe way to write is instead with…

"We had a bug in our code, I fixed it"

I've seen this so many times where the same individual introduced and fixed the bug, it is now funny.

This is corporate team level equivalent of "Socializing losses and privatizing profits".

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#384

Post by BrandonM »

antipurist wrote: post #314
socalgal2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy I'd use is using LLMs for coding is like a movie director does for movies. A movie director does not draw storyboards, they ask an H.I. (Human Intelligence) storyboard artists to do that. They don't make the costumes they ask an H.I. costume maker to do that. They don't control the camera they ask a H.I. camera person to do that. They don't usually act, they ask H.I. actors to do that. They don't make the…

One major difference is that H.I. often cares for the outcome, so directing them is enough. LLM has no capacity to care, it is just a tool, more like watercolors that you paint with than a H.I. storyboard artist that can promise you meaningful results.

That and you can find good people that get your vision or just do good work and use them on your next project. Or you can mentor a promising person. Etc. Mapping HI to AI as the gp did misses all the major deficiencies of collaborating with a team of agents vs competent humans.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#385

Post by fnoef »

daxfohl wrote: post #380
fnoef wrote: post #215

Either my brain is cooked or this is AI generated/assisted text. The problem is I can no longer tell the difference between AI and non-AI writing. Maybe my brain got bad, maybe everyone now writes like AI writes. I no longer know.

My manager said "load-bearing" during a presentation the other day and I almost lost it.

Wait until they drop the “that’s the smoking gun”

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#387

Post by user43928 »

callc wrote: post #321
user43928 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also spend a lot of time at work trying to get the code into a shape I deem acceptable to open a MR for the team, without looking incompetent. At home I stopped reviewing the code for my mobile app, and I do not feel this has affected maintainability. With 150k LOC, the AI still performs changes as easily as it did three months ago, when I started the project. If anything, the new models made it easier. When I read…

150k sounds like a LOT… what’s your use case for the app? It seems for any particular problem/comexity there is an estimate of how many LoC is needed (written by humans, good coding practices). And after reaching maturity (and not increasing scope) the LoC converges. My experience with LLMs so far is it’s a constant battle to not explode the LoC. There’s always pressure away from “maintainability” and a “small elegan…

It is in media management. I cannot talk about the features in detail, but I would not be surprised if it can be done with half the line count.

What I was trying to say is that maintainability appears largely unaffected.

Doing manual QA testing and iterating on improvements still works great.

The question then is in which cases "small elegant cohesive" is worth it, when the implementation effort increases tenfold. For the product I am working on at home for 30h/week, I can confidently say it is not worth it.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#388

Post by eloisius »

MostlyStable wrote: post #30

I take the point, but I think the author picked a poor analogy. Cooking even an excellent steak is actually not that hard. In fact, I'd argue that it's among the easiest things to master/make at a top level quality at home. Does it require some modicum of attention and understanding? Sure. But starting with a high quality cut, owning a meat-thermometer, and knowing about reverse searing is about all it takes to relia…

Not sure I agree. I have also always thought steak was pretty easy. Whether a t-bone on the grill, a flatiron skirt steak, or some garbage-tier sirloin with eggs. It’s simple. Salt, sit, cook a few minutes, rest it a few more and eat. Always good.

Until I moved to Taiwan. I truly can’t understand how no one can make a steak. From the garbage pale meat glue “night market steaks” to expensive restaurants. Every steak I’ve had here is a complete disappointment. Even when they supposedly use top-quality US prime or Japanese Wagyu, even when the inside looks pink and not burned to a crisp, it’s always total dogfood quality. They often emulate the right look: pink interior, char on the outside, shiny tallow. But something is off. I never feel like I’m chewing a piece of steak. More like grinding tasteless muscle protein into paste with my teeth.

I don’t even know how it’s wrong sometimes. I look at it and just know that something is wrong that I wouldn’t even know how to replicate, becayse cooking a decent steak is easy to me.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#389

Post by atraac »

somenameforme wrote: post #361
jaggederest wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee is a good metaphor here too, because bad technique can ruin a good steak just as surely as good coffee. "knows how to use a meat thermometer and reverse sear" describes like 10% of the population or less, same with coffee - there are people who use a bad grinder and a not-regularly-cleaned Mr. Coffee with good beans and get gas station coffee, and there are people out there making solidly B+ class coffee using…

I'd bring the cheapo French press kit it into the A- domain once you appreciate the number one trick to making good coffee: DON'T BOIL THE WATER. Water that is hot, but well below boiling brings out the flavor of the beans a million times more than boiling water. Get a glass kettle, and turn it off when you start to get some decent bubble action on the bottom. Once you get that down, zomg - a French press with even t…

> DON'T BOIL THE WATER. Water that is hot, but well below boiling brings out the flavor of the beans a million times more than boiling water.

That actually depends on the coffee. Pouring 99C+ water onto light roasted coffee is perfectly fine in most cases and will actually extract more.

Re: Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

#390

Post by eloisius »

unsatchmo wrote: post #386

Why is everyone being so damned precious about software? Software is not fine wine or a nice cigar.

A better analogy is a quality woodworking tool. A sharp planer is mesmerizing as you work the material. A Salesforce-acquistioned enterprise tool that redirects through 15 endpoints over 3000 ms on every link click is the antithesis to that.
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