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Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

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Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#41

Post by meysamazad »

resonious wrote: post #37
analogpixel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that most of the time, programming is just procrastination, and having the LLM there breaks through that procrastination and lets me focus on the idea I was thinking on without going into the weeds. A lot of the time, the LLM outputs the code, I test my idea, and realize I really don't care or the idea wasn't that great, and now I can move on to something else.

I hope at some point people don't feel the need to justify using or not using LLMs. If you feel like using them, use them. If you regret doing that, delete the code and write it yourself. And vice versa - if you are in a slog and an LLM can get you out, just use it.

I love this answer

I really do

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#42

Post by jauntywundrkind »

What seems perfect is the adaptability & changeability, the suiting to fit.

We see LLMs as a huge opportunity here, to self define.

And existing software as too limberous & weighty.

But there are so many other dimensions and levels of how and why the past hasn't let us situate our software and us together effectively. The architecture of software doesn't have this grow-in-ability to it.

I love the Home-cooked Software and Barefoot Developers material. But neither of those ideas nor perfect software nor audience of one actually appeal to me that strongly. They are all very positive enormous breaks from bad software and bad times where we didn't have basic liberty over systems. But they all strike me as valorizing a particularly isolated rejectionist view of software, that ultimately is rude to the protocols & affordances building that a good healthy and connected form of software that we might and perhaps SHOULD aspire to.

But anything unjamming is from the inflexible unarticulated illegible mess of systems we can at best endure today is doing great work. Many positive steps into greater beyonds out of bad tar pits. 2025 has amazing hope amid all this.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#43

Post by lll-o-lll »

golemotron wrote: post #39
lll-o-lll wrote: post #14

This article triggers all my “written by an LLM” spidey senses. Which is ironic considering the subject matter. “Perfect”, but artificially constructed. “Just for me”, but algorithmic slop. I agree that you can do so much more custom tailoring of bespoke software with the speed an LLM brings. But something inside of me still revolts at calling this anything other than “convenient”. “Perfect” I will reserve for things…

Look at it this way. The carver doesn't have to grow the tree. Using an LLM for coding is a lot like being a carver. You can take broad or small strokes and discard what you don't like.

> Using an LLM for coding is a lot like being a carver.

It’s nothing like being a carver. It’s like being a director; “Once more! With feeling!”. “Perfect, brilliant, just one more take, and I want you to consider…”

A sculptor shapes with their hands, and there is pleasure in that. A director shapes with someone else’s hands.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#44

Post by zingar »

2001zhaozhao wrote: post #26

What we really need is well-built open source software base with flexible and well-documented plugin SDKs where people can just vibecode their own extensions on top of them. The software needs to be designed from scratch expressly for the purpose of being extended in this way, and the SDK should place appropriate limits to allow multiple extensions to be combined easily. Otherwise, there is too much you have to do ri…

Interested in what you’re doing with gaming. Are you literally extending game code?

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#45

Post by zingar »

1313ed01 wrote: post #11

Someone just discovered why some of us enjoy shell scripts and Emacs so much. No need for LLM, just small hacks to solve specific problems in limited contexts that works well enough, most of the time, for one user.

I’ve written so much more elisp and bash this year because of LLMs.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#46

Post by zingar »

andy99 wrote: post #34

I guess software is going to be like furniture - there was some (possibly imagined) period where it was very well made and bought for the long term, and (obvious where this is going) now there’s lots of ikea crap that is easy and cheap but doesn’t survive a move or getting water spilled on it, and is essentially Formica over cardboard. Overall both are net positives, I have some nice wood furniture and also a $7 Lack…

I have the same furniture analogy in mind. If we imagine that more people have more agency when it comes to extending software, what does the software equivalent of repair look like? What does dumpster diving or a second hand software store look like?

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#48

Post by anon7000 »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #21

I was nodding along enthusiastically right up until LLMs and that point we sharply diverge. For me, part of creating "perfect" software is that I am very much the one crafting the software. I'm learning while creating, but I find such learning is greatly diminished when I outsource building to AI. It's certainly harder and perhaps my software is worse, but for me the sense of achievement is also much greater.

That’s really not the point of the post!

The author is saying that “perfect software” is like a perfect cup of coffee. It’s highly subjective to the end user. The perfect software for me perfectly matches how I want to interact with software. It has options just for me. It’s fine tuned to my taste and my workflows, showing me information I want to see. You might never find a tool that’s perfect for you because someone else wrote it for their own taste.

LLMs come in because it wildly increases the amount of stuff you can play around with on a personal level. It means someone finally has time to put together the perfect workflow and advanced tools. I personally have about 0 time outside of work that I can invest in that, so I totally buy the idea that LLMs can really give people the space to develop personal tools and workflows that work perfectly for them. The barrier to entry and experimentation is incredibly low, and since it’s just for you, you don’t need to worry about scale and operations and all the hard stuff.

There is still plenty of room for someone to do it by hand, but I certainly don’t have time to do that. So I’ll never find perfect software for some of my workflows unless I get an assist from LLMs.

I agree with you about learning and achievement and fun — but that’s completely unrelated to the topic!

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#49

Post by sieabahlpark »

zingar wrote: post #46
andy99 wrote: post #34

I guess software is going to be like furniture - there was some (possibly imagined) period where it was very well made and bought for the long term, and (obvious where this is going) now there’s lots of ikea crap that is easy and cheap but doesn’t survive a move or getting water spilled on it, and is essentially Formica over cardboard. Overall both are net positives, I have some nice wood furniture and also a $7 Lack…

I have the same furniture analogy in mind. If we imagine that more people have more agency when it comes to extending software, what does the software equivalent of repair look like? What does dumpster diving or a second hand software store look like?

[dead]

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#50

Post by mgfist »

andy99 wrote: post #34

I guess software is going to be like furniture - there was some (possibly imagined) period where it was very well made and bought for the long term, and (obvious where this is going) now there’s lots of ikea crap that is easy and cheap but doesn’t survive a move or getting water spilled on it, and is essentially Formica over cardboard. Overall both are net positives, I have some nice wood furniture and also a $7 Lack…

Most "good" software like you speak of was written long ago. Slop has dominated long even before LLMs.
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