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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

#441

Post by skydhash »

j16sdiz wrote: post #421
Hendrikto wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Spreadsheet is a DSL for finance and a lot of other sectors. But the lack of formal logic capabilities shows when you seen the spreadsheet organization. Most only stand with ducktape all over the place.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#442

Post by abustamam »

dzonga wrote: post #433
xorcist wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who has ever done programming professionally in the small scale knows this. Refining the requirements is the job. In fact, I've never known an industry so keen on levelling its own moats as the software industry. We regularly invent things like 4GL, graphical programming and frameworks and engines such as Unity just to enable more people to do programming. People will happily teach programming for free in out…

the 1 dimensional thinking that's perverse in the industry will be catastrophic. we don't like doing the hard things e.g training juniors so they can be skilled seniors via good apprenticeship programs i.e on the job. now we r delegating to stochastic parrots. in terms of systems thinking which is one skill you need to be a domain expertise - very few people are ever curious & are not willing or able to ask critical…

I use LLMs daily for coding. That said, I agree with your sentiment. Super strong bricks, poorly put together, makes a bad building.

Another analogy I like is a beginner playing a $100k Stratavarius probably can't produce anything near a professional violinist playing a $50 violin.

Personally I use LLMs to level up my systems thinking. I describe the domain, I have it brainstorm some scalable solutions, I look them up, I bring them up to the team, and we discuss, and I implement. It's a great workflow imo.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#443

Post by necovek »

JodieBenitez wrote: post #372
necovek wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be explicit: Claude is just another tool in your SW engineer's belt. If you believe Claude makes you a good engineer and you previously weren't, I am saying that's not true and you still are not a good engineer even with the latest-and-greatest Claude model. The difference is between "helps" (in your comment) or "you are". Sure, it helps a good engineer do more, do better, etc — but the thread was on being a goo…

I was a "good" (whatever that means !) SW engineer long before Claudex. At least good enough that both users and bosses had nothing but praises. And I always took my job and the needs of the users seriously. It's "just another tool", sure. But one that is so powerful that some things that used to take a day now take minutes, or ones that used to take a week now take a day. And I get even more praises now, along with…

Sounds like we are in agreement: LLMs are a great help to an already good engineer.

But also to the original Simon's point that using LLM does not a good engineer make — how we make one is still on us with 10+ years (I've got "only" 20) of experience to figure out now that LLMs are here!

Implicit definition of a good engineer is the one who chooses the right balance between effort, complexity, performance to build a working software system for a business need that can be evolved according to (unforeseen!) future business needs at reasonable cost.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#444

Post by petra »

skydhash wrote: post #440
andsoitis wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So often times he would sit down with these accounting folks and go through lots of example transactions he came up with, and from there he essentially built up the requirements spec. Right, so the spec is derived from examples, an interactive process that doesn’t require a programmer.

The programmer skill is how to abstract the specs from all the examples. And then to formalize it. Actual coding is merely translation. And only beginners tend to focus on that.

Sounds very similar to what AI is good at.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#446

Post by patrulek »

Software engineering is a domain on its own, just a technical, not a business one. Good luck with looking for a once in a million data race or deadlock bugs. Good luck with synchronizing system distributed over a whole globe. And good luck with keeping your domain knowledge up-to-date while developing and maintaining your vibecoded system. Assuming you can even provide enough details and deterministic specification to AI agent, because understanding business and having knowledge is not equal to being able to write down specific and concise rules to make a system out of it.

And if you think LLM are (or will be) good enough to not care about software part, what makes you think that your domain will not be completely resolved by AI?

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#447

Post by yearesadpeople »

Very well articulated for sure. But, I do think the word _'expert'_ always tends to do a lot of heavy lifting.

What looks like _'expertise'_ may actually be pattern recognition built through repeated practice. I do believe that is what a model can already do faster than humans.

So, to me, we've got to be cautious here in that what this post implies is humanity must strive to be in the 99.99th percentile of domain knowledge to 'beat' the model. This is perhaps problematic.

I do think focusing on judgement is the only tact discourse here, and I do think that is fine. Once we have invariance well-defined and covered in suites of various types of testing strategies, and are focused on regulation, wouldn't that be a more doable objective?

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#448

Post by ElProlactin »

wiseowise wrote: post #387
ElProlactin wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try asking a non-developer in your life what their dream software would be for their work, or their hobby. If they don't have what Nilay Patel calls "software brain" I'd be surprised if they came up with something actionable. I've posted this in numerous comments because I think it bears repeating: there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who…

> there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who have been successful in acquiring initial customers. It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI. > they probably have a better intuitive sense for digital product design than a 30 or 40-something engineer who has been staring at an IDE for the pas…

> It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI.

They weren't building and shipping by themselves though. They were hiring people to do the work.

AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money.

> Because developers only stare at IDE 24/7, and never interact with anyone besides mother who brings tendies to their basement? What am I even reading?

Why is so hard to acknowledge the fact that many of the people who are good at developing aren't as good at coming up with ideas for digital products and building businesses on them?

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#449

Post by drdrek »

Kernel developer is not the job same as a game developer or an ERP integrator...

But Generalizations aside I think people greatly under estimate how rare is the ability to reduce complex subjects into concrete steps that someone else can follow, human or machine.

Go ask your grandma for a recipe you will find that it never turns out the same, giving her Claude Code is not going to change that.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#450

Post by 4er_transform »

xorcist wrote: post #397
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…

Anybody who has ever done programming professionally in the small scale knows this. Refining the requirements is the job. In fact, I've never known an industry so keen on levelling its own moats as the software industry. We regularly invent things like 4GL, graphical programming and frameworks and engines such as Unity just to enable more people to do programming. People will happily teach programming for free in out…

Everything everywhere does this. All human progress has been making common and accessible the rare and expensive. Universities, online courses, textbooks, etc all exist to make economics as accessible as possible, there’s just a really tight reward loop with programming so your rate of learning it is more tangible
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