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Software design is now cheap

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Re: Software design is now cheap

#41

Post by mikert89 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #30
mikert89 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’ll just spit the code out. I vibe coded some with cookie handling the other day that worked. Should I have done it? Nope. But the ai did it and I allowed it The concept of using a library for everything will become outdated

Either you didn't need a library for that or you could have vibe coded it using the library even easier.

It read the library and created a custom implementation for my use case. The implementation was interoperable with a popular nextjs with library. It was a hack sure, but it also took me three minutes

Re: Software design is now cheap

#42

Post by yieldcrv »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #39

Gotta love a world in which a tool which has ingested "all the world's libraries" is now trotted out as a solution to replace those libraries. You know what would happen if all the people who handwrote and maintained those libraries revoked their code from the training datasets and forbid their use by the models? :clown face emoji: This LLM-maxxing is always a myopic one-way argument. The LLMs steal logic from the hu…

> You know what would happen if all the people who handwrote and maintained those libraries revoked their code from the training datasets and forbid their use by the models?

The MCP servers combined with agentic search solved this possibility, just this year superseding RAG methods but all techniques have their place. I don't see much of a future for RAG though, given its computational intensity.

Long story short, training and fine tuning is no longer necessary for an LLM to understand the latest libraries, and therefore the "permission" to train would not even be something applicable to debate

it's a fast moving field, best not to have a strong opinion about anything

Re: Software design is now cheap

#43

Post by mikert89 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #32
mikert89 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time might come when the ai just writes things like http request parsers and crypto libraries on the fly. And it will be somewhat normal

But why? Even if you could have an AI do that it’s, if anything, a waste of cpu cycles. If you have a battle tested library that works and has been tested for trillions of request cycles why would you even want to write a new one that needs testing and maintenance? No matter how cheap code gen gets it doesn’t make sense. For something like a UI library, sure build something specific to your needs.

Libraries are really built for human beings, not super intelligent machines. ORMs are built because I don’t like to and can’t write complex sql with every edge case.

Same with a lot of software, software libraries are designed to work with the deficiencies of the human mind.

There’s no reason to think ai needs these libraries in the same way

Re: Software design is now cheap

#44

Post by ozozozd »

ekropotin wrote: post #15
amluto wrote: post #8

This article is lumps design and implementation together. In my experience, LLMs are really quite bad at designing anything interesting. They are sort of tolerable at implementation — they’re remarkably persistent (compared to humans, anyway), they will tirelessly use whatever framework, good or bad, you throw at them, and they will produce code that is quite painful to look at. And they’ll say that they’re architect…

>LLMs are really quite bad at designing anything interesting Let’s be honest, how many devs are actually creating something interesting/unique at their work? Most of the time, our job is just picking the right combination of well-known patterns to make the best possible trade-offs while fulfilling the requirements.

Unless you work for a consulting firm, you should be working on something new/unique.

It’s a winner-takes-all market. There are no buyers for off brand Salesforce or Uber.

Re: Software design is now cheap

#45

Post by themafia »

bigwheels wrote: post #3
themafia wrote: post #2

> Less dependency management, less glue, less accidental complexity from adapting your problem to someone else’s abstraction. Less maintenance and flexibility. You're not really "designing software" until you have a 20+ year old product. Vibe coders really embody the "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" mindset so perfectly.

This seems like an uncharitable take. Personally I would refrain from putting a 20 year barrier around the qualification, that seems a little harsh. TFA's take makes sense in a certain context. Getting a high-quality design which is flexible in desirable ways is now easier than ever. As the human asking an LLM for the design, maybe you shouldn't be claiming to have "designed" it, though.

I was specific to the age of the product not of the age of the developer on that project. The point is that "high quality design" is such a fleeting thing that perhaps "longevity of design" is more worth having. It's also probably the case that the latter is much harder to come by which makes it a perfect barrier of qualification.

Re: Software design is now cheap

#46

Post by themafia »

MattGaiser wrote: post #6
themafia wrote: post #2

> Less dependency management, less glue, less accidental complexity from adapting your problem to someone else’s abstraction. Less maintenance and flexibility. You're not really "designing software" until you have a 20+ year old product. Vibe coders really embody the "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" mindset so perfectly.

This is ridiculous. There are numerous multi billion dollar software companies with customers less than half that age.

Is there some reason to think that poorly designed software cannot be profitable? Perhaps we shouldn't use revenue as a proxy for quality?

More to the point how much of that profit is generated from selling those customers data rather than earning those customers payments?

Re: Software design is now cheap

#47

Post by feastingonslop »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #39

Gotta love a world in which a tool which has ingested "all the world's libraries" is now trotted out as a solution to replace those libraries. You know what would happen if all the people who handwrote and maintained those libraries revoked their code from the training datasets and forbid their use by the models? :clown face emoji: This LLM-maxxing is always a myopic one-way argument. The LLMs steal logic from the hu…

LLMs write superior code. Maybe they learned from humans, but they have seen further while standing on those shoulders.

Re: Software design is now cheap

#48

Post by mikert89 »

feastingonslop wrote: post #38
thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the advantage of coding something from scratch vs importing a well tested library?

If the LLM writes better code (and it will) then its code should be favored over a library.

People aren’t mentally prepared for the LLMs spitting out flawless code

Re: Software design is now cheap

#49

Post by agumonkey »

amluto wrote: post #8

This article is lumps design and implementation together. In my experience, LLMs are really quite bad at designing anything interesting. They are sort of tolerable at implementation — they’re remarkably persistent (compared to humans, anyway), they will tirelessly use whatever framework, good or bad, you throw at them, and they will produce code that is quite painful to look at. And they’ll say that they’re architect…

I was wondering if our goal is to leverage them to think about interfaces a bit, like a slightly accelerated modeling phase and then let them loose on the implementation (and maybe later let them loose on local optimization tricks)

Re: Software design is now cheap

#50

Post by pinkgolem »

feastingonslop wrote: post #47
jaredcwhite wrote: post #39

Gotta love a world in which a tool which has ingested "all the world's libraries" is now trotted out as a solution to replace those libraries. You know what would happen if all the people who handwrote and maintained those libraries revoked their code from the training datasets and forbid their use by the models? :clown face emoji: This LLM-maxxing is always a myopic one-way argument. The LLMs steal logic from the hu…

LLMs write superior code. Maybe they learned from humans, but they have seen further while standing on those shoulders.

Then you have access to better models then I do (4.6/5.3)

The code is mostly not bad, but most programmers i have worked with write far better code.

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