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Domain expertise has always been the real moat

brethorsting.com

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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#551

Post by starfallg »

layer8 wrote: post #469
starfallg wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the flip side to that is the iterative conversation to develop these specifications is exactly what AI chatbots are good at. It's also the main reason why very structured AI agent orchestration for software engineering modelled on rigid processes fails to really provide much value.

I suspect that the reason AI chatbots are not very good at developing such specifications is that they don’t build a domain model in their “head” — the only models they have are already hardcoded in their weights. A human learning a domain, on the other hand, forms new neural connections representing the model of the domain that they build in their head.

Chatbots are good at helping humans arrive at the specification. Apart from people that has deep expertise and/or talent in this area, humans aren't very good at building these specifications. That's the topic of this exchange.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#552

Post by steve_adams_86 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #428
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???”

You’re right. I have a friend who works in landscape architecture and he’s getting up to really cool things involving parametric modelling tools. Stuff he couldn’t easily do with off-the-shelf software is now attainable and he’s going wild with it. You’ll never hear about it here (though it totally belongs here)

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#553

Post by jplusequalt »

asdff wrote: post #537
jplusequalt wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all this hand wringing on performance, graphics, quality quality quality, has just resulted in basically same stuff as what I was doing with my computer in 2000 but with enormous resource use in compariso Mordern GPUs are streaming multiprocessors. Complaining that GPUs use a ton of resources is like complaining that a firehose uses a ton of water. Maximum data throughput is the point! >But that isn't what any of th…

I'm willing to bet all those novel games would have still been great games if they took their underlying mechanics and were making them in early 2000s with that era graphics. Ray tracing isn't a game mechanic. Neither is hair physics.

I'm not sure where people get the idea that graphics quality is the root issue with modern AAA games. When a great game is released and it looks amazing (Baldurs Gate 3), nobody is taking issue with the graphics.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#554

Post by jaggederest »

noisy_boy wrote: post #184
jaggederest wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically IDE free since May 2025. I actually reinstalled vscode when setting up a new machine and I think I've launched it twice? cc -> local automated testing -> github -> PR -> heavy integration tests -> review (github ui, +/-) -> manual test locally -> merge -> deploy -> manual test remotely -> synthetic user testing -> repeat

But what about navigating the code by the call stack? I didn't know that GitHub has a way to do that. Or maybe I'm probably coming across as being dumb enough to be talking about still trying to have a mental model of what calls what.

For what it's worth, generally speaking I read all of the code and keep it in my brain - I have some uncommon assets in that regard like a high reading speed and great memory. `git grep` is the other tool I use often.

I rarely find that the call stack is the limiting factor, to me, and I suppose I do something similar to what you're talking about but just in my head - I know where a file is referenced via imports, what a function does, and what the flow of control is like.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#555

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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.

It’s not theoretical I literally teach this and people who are shipping their own tools and products that are in their 40s and 50s have never thought about coding ever.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#556

Post by AndrewKemendo »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #552
enraged_camel wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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???”

You’re right. I have a friend who works in landscape architecture and he’s getting up to really cool things involving parametric modelling tools. Stuff he couldn’t easily do with off-the-shelf software is now attainable and he’s going wild with it. You’ll never hear about it here (though it totally belongs here)

I’ve posted about it a lot, it’s posted all the time. It’s pretty much the main topic

The issue isn’t that it’s not happening, it’s that people on HN have their identities tied to typing code and can’t deal with the fact that amateurs are trying to compete

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#557

Post by tim-projects »

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…

> they'd have a hell of a time prompting an AI system on how to grade a test for grammar correctness.

This isn't true. They can simply upload a whole bunch of completed and marked tests and say show me the rules. And follow that up with 'write me a prompt'

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#558

Post by aleph_minus_one »

DanielHB wrote: post #451
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…

I think you are underestimating how hard it is for average joe to learn programming basics. I remember a fellow in high school that just could not accept that = in programming is assignment not an equation (like in high school math)

> I remember a fellow in high school that just could not accept that = in programming is assignment not an equation (like in high school math)

The English noun "mist" has a different meaning than the German noun "[der] Mist" (dung, crap). Or the French "[la] infusion" has a different meaning (herbal tea) than the English "infusion" and the German "[die] Infusion".

So, you are very used to the situation that in different languages, terms can have different meaning, so also in, say, C versus mathematics.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#559

Post by abishr12 »

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…

what people miss is that software engineering is its own language, even the finance expert can code but doesn't mean they should.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#560

Post by wiee »

ifh-hn wrote: post #120

This sort of thing has Microsoft Access vibes about it. All AI is enabling is domain experts to spin up their own software systems with no understanding of how the systems should be put together. Sure it lowers the bar, and some people will design decent things, but mostly these things will become mission critical and broken at the same time.

Access or Microsoft front page?
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