Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Backpressure is all you need

lucasfcosta.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 133 posts

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#71

Post by jaggederest »

osigurdson wrote: post #70
jaggederest wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing however is a test suite is not usually exhaustive in the sense that any code that passes the tests is valid. Usually tests are more complimentary in nature. Not in the world of AI - if your tests don't catch any known issues, the problem is the tests aren't comprehensive enough. There's no excuse at this point not to have an incredibly comprehensive test suite, to go with your other agent feedback loop co…

>> if your tests don't catch any known issues, the problem is the tests aren't comprehensive enough. Maybe I misunderstand but this seems like a fairly low bar in the test suite only covers existing bugs. I'd argue that if you aren't going to look at the code you actually need a fully comprehensive test suite - in the sense that if the tests pass, the code is correct and you don't have to look at it at all. The probl…

I don't mean just bugs, I mean any known issues. I test infra, I test UI, I test binary protocols, you name it. There is certainly no fast way to do it, even with AI (an AI generated suite is better than nothing but not as good), and it's a serious investment, but it's worth it. Testing becomes a process of correctness checking that snowballs over time, making everything else easier and better (or else the tests need further adjustment!)

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#72

Post by NamTaf »

bluGill wrote: post #47
0x696C6961 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's wild watching so many people decide waterfall is great all of a sudden.

Every large project in the coming back to waterfall. While the problems are certainly known and it was ultimately developed as a straw man, everything else ends up working worse. That said, you shouldn't be thinking pure waterfall as it's drawn up as a strawman, but rather a waterfall variation with feedback loops. But in the end, in very, very many cases, you have to know an end date in order to get things done beca…

ITT we discover that project managers actually serve a purpose and not all of them are the stereotypical useless roles Dilbert riffed on.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#73

Post by apf6 »

Slowing down development is the wrong goal. I see a desire for slowness come up a lot with developers. If you pursue that goal all the way to its logical conclusion then eventually you would stop all coding completely. Which would prevent new bugs but obviously we can't do that and keep our jobs.

By all means add tons of quality gates to your SDLC pipeline. But thinking about slowness purely for the sake of slowness will not solve your problems.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#74

Post by senderista »

ricksunny wrote: post #33
lucasfcosta wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Well noted. I do think backpressure might not be the ideal analogy/term. It comes from previous posts I’ve come across, but I haven’t considered exactly what you mentioned. That’s on me.

lol your comment sounds like a Claude apology

Honestly? The point lands.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#75

Post by apsurd »

apf6 wrote: post #73

Slowing down development is the wrong goal. I see a desire for slowness come up a lot with developers. If you pursue that goal all the way to its logical conclusion then eventually you would stop all coding completely. Which would prevent new bugs but obviously we can't do that and keep our jobs. By all means add tons of quality gates to your SDLC pipeline. But thinking about slowness purely for the sake of slowness…

If AI makes code a commodity, then why is the prescription for everyone to ship even more code even more urgently?

My gut reaction, as a professional developer, to my (previous) company's AI mandates was an instinctive "wait but..." -- it didn't logic out to me. Now that I have much more AI experience under my belt, I understand the tension, it's a superpower and net-net ok so more features and more "stuff" will be built. But it's a very hard thing to balance. It's always been a bad idea for a company to position themselves as the one with more "stuff" in it.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#76

Post by osigurdson »

jaggederest wrote: post #71
osigurdson wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> if your tests don't catch any known issues, the problem is the tests aren't comprehensive enough. Maybe I misunderstand but this seems like a fairly low bar in the test suite only covers existing bugs. I'd argue that if you aren't going to look at the code you actually need a fully comprehensive test suite - in the sense that if the tests pass, the code is correct and you don't have to look at it at all. The probl…

I don't mean just bugs, I mean any known issues. I test infra, I test UI, I test binary protocols, you name it. There is certainly no fast way to do it, even with AI (an AI generated suite is better than nothing but not as good), and it's a serious investment, but it's worth it. Testing becomes a process of correctness checking that snowballs over time, making everything else easier and better (or else the tests need…

Right. You mean all behaviors are tested, essentially.

So if you / team are going to implement a new feature, what does that look like? Do you write Gherkin or similar, unit tests or both? Can you provide an example of what that might look like? How much of this has changed for you since the pre-AI days?

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#77

Post by einpoklum »

In other words: Spending more tokens is all you need.

The main kind of pressure I'm feeling is the pressure of the giant AI, GPU & datacenter companies with their insane capital expenditure and circular deals, trying to get enough people to develop an expensive reliance on their service. And the more expensive, the better, so don't just pay for the LLM to code for you, have another LLM interact with the first LLM and pay double, treble, 5x or whatever. Then you can get the most refined slop.

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#79

Post by ptx »

lucasfcosta wrote: post #29
xg15 wrote: post #19

Isn't this a bit of an incorrect usage of the term "backpressure"? OP quoted the correct definition right at the start: > In systems engineering, backpressure is the mechanism by which a downstream component signals upstream that it can't accept more work (the "downstream component" being the human reviewer in this case) But the measures they propose don't actually do that. They are more like fixed throttle elements…

Author here. Well noted. I do think backpressure might not be the ideal analogy/term. It comes from previous posts I’ve come across, but I haven’t considered exactly what you mentioned. That’s on me.

Maybe it's more like shift-left testing [1]? You're trying to move some checks to earlier in the process, if I understood you correctly, and get cheaper feedback loops.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift-left_testing

Re: Backpressure is all you need

#80

Post by DoctorOetker »

marcosdumay wrote: post #32
jeffbee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an incorrect use of what was already a flawed metaphor. Pressure is isotropic. Directed pressure makes no sense, like all other fluid analogies in unrelated fields of engineering.

The act of "making pressure" means applying a force and is completely directional.

so this is about lower or upper back pressure?
Post reply on HN