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The rise of industrial software

chrisloy.dev

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Re: The rise of industrial software

#51

Post by speeder »

cryptica wrote: post #33
ciconia wrote: post #16

Hmm, I'm not sure I see the value in "disposable software". In any commercial service people are looking for software solutions that are durable, dependable, extensible, maintainable. This is the exact opposite of disposable software. The whole premise of AI bringing democratization to software development and letting any layperson produce software signals a gross misunderstanding of how software development works an…

Yes, software needs to be secure. If we accept the premise that software is going to be churned out in bulk, then the mechanisms for securing software must evolve rapidly... I don't see a world where there is custom software for everything but all insecure in different ways.

This only means you didn't interacted enough with IOT or junky viral games market...

Re: The rise of industrial software

#53

Post by djantje »

It is just going to be even more less important software.

There is a difference between writing for mainstream software and someone's idea/hope for the future.

Software that is valued high enough will be owned and maintained.

Like most things in our world, I think ownership/stewardship is like money and world hunger, a social issue/question.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#54

Post by xorcist »

Etheryte wrote: post #9
bolangi wrote: post #4

This thought-provoking essay does not consider one crucial aspect of software: the cost of a user developing a facility with a given software product. Historically monopolistic software producers can force these costs to be borne because the user has no alternative to upgrading to the latest version of, for example, Windows, or gmail, or the latest version of the github GUI. A signficant portion of the open source /…

I don't think the division line runs on the open-source software front here. Windows has historically offered some of the most stable APIs, meanwhile there's plenty of examples of popular open-source software with a lot of breaking changes.

The comment you replied to said "significant portion of" and I believe it is clear which portion that refers to: the culture around c, linux, vim and bash, not things like nodejs, java and (semi-open-source) elasticsearch which are culturally separate.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#55

Post by nchmy »

WJW wrote: post #47

This essay, like so many others, mistakes the task of "building" software with the task of "writing" software. Anyone in the world can already get cheap, mass-produced software to do almost anything they want their computer to do. Compilers spit out new build of any program on demand within seconds, and you can usually get both source code and pre-compiled copies over the internet. The "industrial process" (as TFA pu…

You're getting caught up on the technical meaning of terms rather than what the author actually wrote.

Theyre explicitly saying that most software will no longer be artisianal - a great literary novel - and instead become industrialized - mass produced paperback garbage books. But also saying that good software, like literature, will continue to exist.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#56

Post by bodegajed »

zkmon wrote: post #20

A question that was not addressed in the article and contrasts software with industrialized products from the past is - who are the consumers of the software produced at industrial scale? Stitching of clothes by machines accelerated garment product only because there was demand and consumption tied to population. But software is not tied to population similar to food and clothes. It doesn't deprecate, it is not exclu…

code has no use-value. it is like being a baker in an island. the value comes from its user base.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#57

Post by samiv »

motbus3 wrote: post #7

I'm not through yet but I don't know. As a developer for almost 30 years now, if I think where most of my code went, I would say, quantitatively, to the bin. I processed much data, dumps and logs over the years. I collected statistical information, mapped flows, created models of the things I needed to understand. And this was long before any "big data" thing. Nothing changed with AI. I keep doing the same things, bu…

Heh...I've worked for 25 years and basically I'm yet to put code into production. Mostly projects that were cancelled or scrubbed either during development or shortly after or just downright never used since they were POC/prototypes.

I think I've overall just had just 2 or 3 projects where anyone has actually even tried the thing I've been working on.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#58

Post by xorcist »

Too many articles are written comparing LLMs to high-level languages. Sure, if you squint enough, both has to do with computers. But that comparison misses everything that is important about LLMs.

High-level languages are about higher abstractions for deterministic processes. LLMs are not necessarily higher abstractions but instead about non-deterministic processes, a fundamentally different thing altogether.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#59

Post by nchmy »

huevosabio wrote: post #13

I've been thinking about this for a while, and largely agree that industralization of software development is what we are seeing. But the emphasis on low quality is misplaced. Take this for example: ``` Industrial systems reliably create economic pressure toward excess, low quality goods. ``` Industrial systems allow for low quality goods, but also they deliver quality way beyond what can be achieved in artisanal pro…

I generally agree. Industrialization puts a decent floor on quality, at low cost. But it also has a ceiling.

Perhaps an industrial car is better than your or my artisanal car, but I'm sure there's people who build cars by hand of very high quality (over the course of years). Likewise fine carpentry vs mass produced stuff vs ikea.

Or I make sourdough bread and it would be very impractical/uncompetitive to start selling it unless I scaled up to make dozens, maybe hundreds, of loaves per day. But it's absolutely far better than any bread you can find on any supermarket shelf. It's also arguably better than most artisanal bakeries who have to follow a production process every day.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#60

Post by nchmy »

swiftcoder wrote: post #41
huevosabio wrote: post #13

I've been thinking about this for a while, and largely agree that industralization of software development is what we are seeing. But the emphasis on low quality is misplaced. Take this for example: ``` Industrial systems reliably create economic pressure toward excess, low quality goods. ``` Industrial systems allow for low quality goods, but also they deliver quality way beyond what can be achieved in artisanal pro…

> but also they deliver quality way beyond what can be achieved in artisanal production I don't think this is true in general, although it may be in certain product categories. Hand-built supercars are still valued by the ultra-wealthy. Artisanal bakeries consistently make better pastries than anything mass produced... and so on

Lol, I now see your comment already used the exact same examples that my sibling comment did
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