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Domain expertise has always been the real moat

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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#421

Post by j16sdiz »

Hendrikto wrote: post #414
miki123211 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a strong suspicion that folks who have a high degree of domain expertise in a particular area will fail as software builders even in an agentic world because they will struggle to elucidate clearly the rules in their head that they've learned over years. This is the part I disagree with. In a non-agentic world, the expert and the programmer are two different people. If the expert finds a bug in the software,…

> In a world of agents, the expert finds the bug, asks the agent to fix it, realizes that the fix is incorrect because of sloppy thinking, does a few iterations until the feature works correctly That would require clearly (a) knowing what you want, and (b) expressing it unambiguously and in detail, including all edge cases. Essentially producing a spec. Most people are not able to do either. Talking to an LLM does no…

but.. they can iterate real quick!

As long as the expert don't run of patience, he may be able to do that.

Consider finance sector -- the industry is powered by excel spreadsheets made by non-programmer having no clue how programming works.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#422

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #309

While I agree that domain expertise has always been a moat, I believe the author is missing something critical: there is a big difference between being able to verify the output of a system is correct, and being able to tell a system how to generate the correct output to begin with. Personal example: I had a software engineering colleague who was the best coder of financial management systems I've ever encountered. H…

[deleted]

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#423

Post by deadbabe »

locknitpicker wrote: post #260
toastmaster11 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the vibe coders are right I would give at least 90% of the credit to all the well made libraries, rules, and best practices that developers have built up over the decades. That’s what is embedded into LLMs and what might be the saving grace of slop code bases in the future.

> (...) rules, and best practices that developers have built up over the decades. It seems you are not understanding that the reason all these "rules, best practices" had to be created in the first place was the fact that your average old times developer was churning out shit code and weaving spaghetti just as hard as today's vibecoders. Those "rules, best practices" spawned from the same evolutionary pressure as tod…

They were not, but they were outputting code at a pace that was reasonable to review. Now they go straight to prod, 10x faster.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#424

Post by cindyllm »

deadbabe wrote: post #423
locknitpicker wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) rules, and best practices that developers have built up over the decades. It seems you are not understanding that the reason all these "rules, best practices" had to be created in the first place was the fact that your average old times developer was churning out shit code and weaving spaghetti just as hard as today's vibecoders. Those "rules, best practices" spawned from the same evolutionary pressure as tod…

They were not, but they were outputting code at a pace that was reasonable to review. Now they go straight to prod, 10x faster.

[dead]

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#427

Post by michaelbuckbee »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #309

While I agree that domain expertise has always been a moat, I believe the author is missing something critical: there is a big difference between being able to verify the output of a system is correct, and being able to tell a system how to generate the correct output to begin with. Personal example: I had a software engineering colleague who was the best coder of financial management systems I've ever encountered. H…

WRT the native grammar, consider adjective order. Few native english speakers (me included) can off the cuff name the proper order, but everyone knows the "right" order.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/...

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#428

Post by enraged_camel »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #36

Such a good example of this I encountered recently: I was on a fishing trip. I asked the charter if he’d want to check out a free app I work on ( https://oceanconnect.ca ) in case it might be useful for his work. I don’t know how people on the ocean use ocean data. I don’t really know what they want to know, or why. I wasn’t totally prepared for the incredible onslaught of questions and information pertaining to how…

>> I found myself thinking people like him could actually do amazing stuff with LLMs if they sat down and got their ideas out on a screen.

They can, and they are. You just don’t hear about it on places like HN because those people are not on this website. Which is why some people here make smug statements like “if LLMs are so good at programming how come we haven’t seen any useful apps made with LLMs???”

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#429

Post by jtgi »

> Agentic AI severed the link between the two. You can now produce the software without ever building the model, and that breaks an assumption the whole profession was organized around.

Nah, we’ve always produced software without much understanding of the domain. It’s the premise behind lean: we don’t know much, so get something in front of customers and refine it.

So I don’t believe there’s been a strong decoupling here akin to the degree that understanding the code and writing the code has been.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#430

Post by trouve_search »

nradov wrote: post #102
xnx wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall I agree with this, though I do think that there will be a trend to hoard/keep-secret domain knowledge by professions. Like plumbers will try and make it a trade-secret or protected intellectual property how to change a pipe fitting.

For basic residential plumbing work the moat is not knowledge. There are already books and YouTube videos that will teach you everything you need to know. Professional plumbers can't stop that. The real moat is that most people don't have time, don't want to buy tools, and don't want to get shit on their hands. For new construction and commercial work the moat is a contractor's license. They don't allow LLMs to take…

The moat is the difference between knowledge and know-how.

You can read all the plumbing books, but you need to get your hands dirty a few times, mess it up and fix it, to get mentally comfortable and efficient with the work

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