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We automated everything except knowing what's going on

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Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#41

Post by iammjm »

afry1 wrote: post #2

"The future belongs to whoever understands what they just shipped." Perfect summary. It's like we invented a world where you can finally, _finally_ speedrun an enormous legacy codebase and all patted ourselves on the back like that was a good thing.

We are speedrunning legacy "codebases" all the time. Or do you conjure up your own pickaxe, mine your own minerals, produce your own electricity, and construct your own computers and networks first before you go off to develop an application? Would you even know how to do those things? That is all enormous legacy codebase that we speedrun all the time. Just add one more to it.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#42

Post by kennethops »

alanbernstein wrote: post #22
silverquiet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything in production is legacy; I'm pretty sure it happens as soon as the code is shipped regardless of who wrote it.

True, but I think there's another dimension implied: how many devs are left that understand the code? Being able to start at zero is a fascinating surprise (compared to five years ago).

a comment I cannot stop thinking about is "we need to start thinking about production as throw away" Which is a wild thought to think about when I think about on my career. We had so many dbs or servers that we couldn't touch because they were a special snowflake

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#43

Post by bluGill »

iammjm wrote: post #36

Should the goal really be to build a system that we completely understand, or build a system that solves a problem? Like we dont fully understand quantum physics, yet good enough to build helpful systems on top of it. Or like not knowing exactly what every bee in a hive does at any moment, yet still reliably harvesting honey in the end? I think people have this modernist desire for absolute truths and certainty, wher…

Someone needs to verify it works enough to trust the output. Of course some things are more critical than others. I don't worry too much about a badly written game, just is it fun - but I still don't want it to delete or transfer my money while I'm playing. However there are also systems where people die if it fails and those need to have a lot more trust/understanding.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#44

Post by whynotmaybe »

I'm still balancing on whether we "need" to know what's happening.

Very few understand deeply what's happening within the computer between the cou and the bridges and the rest.

The fdiv bug in 1994 took us all by surprise because we were in a situation where bug couldn't exist in hardware, because it either works or it doesn't.

When I'm using firebase or aws, I don't know the underlying system, I don't know why some resources can be created with an underscore or other can't start with a number.

Yet it works.

We're working in layers where usually we only touch the last one. Yes, understanding the others is great to debug.

I'm even wondering whether we need tests when they are written by the same llm that wrote the code.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#45

Post by kennethops »

bluGill wrote: post #40

You cannot understand everything. That has been the case since long before AI. I have a vague idea how the linux kernel works, and I could figure it out (I once found and fixed a bug in FreeBSD device drivers) - but I don't, I just trust it works. I've never looked at sqlite to understand how it works - I know enough SQL to be dangerous and trust it works. I know very in depth how the logging framework of my project…

>You cannot understand everything.

I 100% agree with this in a individual person sense, but in a humanity sense someone does understand linux very deeply and is very intentional on how they change it which to me is how I gain trust in it.

does trust change when the entire SLDC is AI?

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#46

Post by bluefirebrand »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #44

I'm still balancing on whether we "need" to know what's happening. Very few understand deeply what's happening within the computer between the cou and the bridges and the rest. The fdiv bug in 1994 took us all by surprise because we were in a situation where bug couldn't exist in hardware, because it either works or it doesn't. When I'm using firebase or aws, I don't know the underlying system, I don't know why some…

> I'm still balancing on whether we "need" to know what's happening.

Of course we do. Otherwise we start trying to water crops with Brawndo

> Very few understand deeply what's happening within the computer between the cou and the bridges and the rest

But it's very very important that those people deeply understand it. We cannot replace their actual knowledge with LLM approximations of their knowledge

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#47

Post by seethishat »

Abstractions have been happening since the 1970s when ASM was replaced by the C Programming Language. From there we got C++ (look, it actually has a string type that most humans understand!) then we got memory safe managed languages like Go that is almost human readable, runs almost everywhere and doesn't have buffer overflows.

ASM was machine specific. C was portable but required expert programmers. C++ was even more user friendly, but still very hard for normal people. Today, most anyone can write a program in Go.

The more we abstract, the less knowledge/expertise is needed. So yes, programs are being built by people who don't really understand what they are doing. That is intended.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#48

Post by caseyohara »

raesene9 wrote: post #33
caseyohara wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are these small businesses and startups? The software economy should be booming, right? I’m not seeing it.

There's a massive difference between launching a piece of software and launching a successful business. Over the last couple of months I've seen a load of new "product launches" in my niche but when you look at them they're largely vibecoded and don't show deep understanding and sustainability, so it's pretty likely you'll never see them as successful businesses. Looking at some of the related places like /r/sideproj…

Then, respectfully, what is the point? Does the trillions-of-dollars AI industry exist to support a few hobbyists building niche products to scratch their own itch? I thought the promise here is increased productivity, presumably in the economic sense.

There seems to be a lot of hype, and has been for years, but I’m not seeing it materialize as actual economic output. Surely by now there should be lots of businesses springing up to capture all of this value created by vibecoded software.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#49

Post by bluGill »

kennethops wrote: post #45
bluGill wrote: post #40

You cannot understand everything. That has been the case since long before AI. I have a vague idea how the linux kernel works, and I could figure it out (I once found and fixed a bug in FreeBSD device drivers) - but I don't, I just trust it works. I've never looked at sqlite to understand how it works - I know enough SQL to be dangerous and trust it works. I know very in depth how the logging framework of my project…

>You cannot understand everything. I 100% agree with this in a individual person sense, but in a humanity sense someone does understand linux very deeply and is very intentional on how they change it which to me is how I gain trust in it. does trust change when the entire SLDC is AI?

Linux is less then 40 years old. Most of the people who designed it are still alive. How will the situation be in 40 years when the current maintainers are dead? (reiserfs comes to mind - it was just becoming great when [censored] and filesystems in linux went backward for many years, will that be allowed to happen next time?)

There are systems still in use from the 1960s (maybe before) - the original authors are at least retired and likely dead. I question how well the replacements understand all that. Sure they have had to dig in and understand some parts, but what about the parts that just keep working and don't need new features?

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#50

Post by scared_together »

iammjm wrote: post #41
afry1 wrote: post #2

"The future belongs to whoever understands what they just shipped." Perfect summary. It's like we invented a world where you can finally, _finally_ speedrun an enormous legacy codebase and all patted ourselves on the back like that was a good thing.

We are speedrunning legacy "codebases" all the time. Or do you conjure up your own pickaxe, mine your own minerals, produce your own electricity, and construct your own computers and networks first before you go off to develop an application? Would you even know how to do those things? That is all enormous legacy codebase that we speedrun all the time. Just add one more to it.

That’s all legacy but none of it is speedrunning.

If we could conjure pickaxes and electric power plants in a single day, that would be speedrunning.

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