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Stop Slopware

stopslopware.net

71–80 of 171 posts

Re: Stop Slopware

#71
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these people are either: Students Activists Hyper opinionated and “principled” engineers (that won’t touch AI) University professors Engineers working with Linux and Free software who hate AI. They all secretly use ChatGPT when it launched and still do.

Nah, they hate Altman, and many are running DeepSeek @ home.

Even if they run DeepSeek at home, it is still AI.

Those who have principles in hating AI should never touch it or use it and swear by that.

Re: Stop Slopware

#72
post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

The one engineer in my life who cared about the craft of software development also refused to have a color profile pic and also did his zooms in black and white and thought Ruby was the only good programming language.

Re: Stop Slopware

#73
post #72
post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

The one engineer in my life who cared about the craft of software development also refused to have a color profile pic and also did his zooms in black and white and thought Ruby was the only good programming language.

That's like one person with terrible taste.

Re: Stop Slopware

#74

> if you’re doing this for your own learning: you will learn better without AI. This is not the distinction I would want to tell newcomers. AI is extremely good for finding out what the most common practices are for all kinds of situations. That's a powerful learning tool. Besides, learning how to use a tool well (one that we can expect professionals to use) is part of learning. Now most common practices and best pra…

It's also extremely good at describing what code is doing, architecture, extrapolating why something is done a certain way etc. Invaluable for me for learning how unfamiliar code works in unfamiliar languages

Re: Stop Slopware

#75
post #67
post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

There’s room for both types of people in any trade. Some photographers obsess over the equipment, some only care about the photos. Carpenters with tools. Musicians with instruments & gear. Every craft has people who care about the how and those who focus on the product. I’ve always enjoyed the craft of software engineering, though even I admit the culture around it can be a bit overly contemplative . Nevertheless, th…

> Just hang out with likeminded people and ignore the rest.

Or find ways to integrate with the rest, challenging one another to facilitate growth.

Re: Stop Slopware

#77

Why would any actual software engineer be against slopware? When it inevitably all comes crashing down because there was no actual software architecture or understanding of the code, someone will have to come in to make the actual product. Hopefully by then we will have realistic expectations for the LLM, have skilled up, and we as a community treat them as just another feature in the IDE.

New job title: “vibe coding cleanup specialist”

Abbreviated as "VC Cleanup Specialist".

With the ambiguity in the meaning of "VC" being intentional.

Re: Stop Slopware

#78
post #67
post #55

It bothers me that so many programmers I know, here and in real life, seem to never actually have cared about the craft of software development? Just about solving problems. I like problem solving too. But I also like theory and craft, and in my naïveté I assumed most of us were like me. LLMs divorced craft-programming from tool-programming and now it seems like there were never any craft-programmers at all. It feels…

There’s room for both types of people in any trade. Some photographers obsess over the equipment, some only care about the photos. Carpenters with tools. Musicians with instruments & gear. Every craft has people who care about the how and those who focus on the product. I’ve always enjoyed the craft of software engineering, though even I admit the culture around it can be a bit overly contemplative . Nevertheless, th…

Caring about craft in programming is more like a photographer caring about light and composition and creativity and taste than a photographer caring about equipment.

Re: Stop Slopware

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New job title: “vibe coding cleanup specialist”

Abbreviated as "VC Cleanup Specialist". With the ambiguity in the meaning of "VC" being intentional.

Launch HN: Vibely - VC Cleaners For Your VC Slop (YC S25)

Re: Stop Slopware

#80
post #37

As a practitioner I also inherently believe in well written software but as a lifelong learner, things change, and evolve. There is absolutely no reason why software today has to be written like software of yesterday. There is no need to be so prescriptive about how software is made. In the end the best will win on the merits. The bad software will die under its own weight with no think pieces necessary. On the other…

> There is absolutely no reason why software today has to be written like software of yesterday. I get what you're saying, but the irony is that AI tools have sort of frozen the state of the art of software development in time. There is now less incentive to innovate on language design, code style, patterns, etc., when it goes outside the range of what an LLM has been trained on and will produce.

> frozen the state of the art

Personally I am experimenting with a lot more data-driven, declarative, correct-by-construction work by default now.

AI handles the polyglot grunt work, which frees you to experiment above the language layer.

I have a dimensional analysis typing metacompiler that enforces physical unit coherence (length + time = compile error) across 25 languages. 23,000 lines of declarative test specs compile down to language-specific validation suites. The LLM shits out templates; it never touches the architecture.

We are still at very very early days.

Specs for my hobby physical types metacompiler tests:

https://gist.github.com/ctoth/c082981b2766e40ad7c8ad68261957...

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