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The rise of industrial software

chrisloy.dev

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Re: The rise of industrial software

#91

Post by cryptica »

swiftcoder wrote: post #46
cryptica wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not only secure. It needs to be reliable (don't corrupt my data). It needs to be durable (I need to be able to access my data 10 years from now). etc.

Yes, agreed. producing reliable software is one of these things which sounds trivial but is actually extremely difficult.

With my last side project, I became frustrated with my non-technical founder because he would have a lot of vague ideas and in his mind, he was sure that he had a crystal clear vision of what he wanted... But it was like, every idea he had, I was finding massive logical holes in them and finding contradictions... Like he wanted a feature and some other feature but it was physically impossible to have both without making the UX terrible.

And it wasn't just one time, it was constantly.

He would get upset at me for pointing out the many hurdles ahead of time... When in fact he should have been thanking me for saving us from ramming our heads into one wall after another.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#92

Post by tosapple »

ofalkaed wrote: post #90
tosapple wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business*, if your "tax-accounting" manager made THAT mistake with numbers you would be screwed.

Occasionally when right clicking on a misspelled word to correct it, I bump the track pad and accidentally add the misspelled word to my dictionary. Business is one of those words I apparently did that with. I have never been able to figure out how to remove words from my dictionary, but honestly never looked that hard, for some ridiculous reason I think people will focus on what was said instead of looking for nits…

I considered it may be a dictionary correction issue but i am sort've railing against the suggestion of current level LLMs being used for tax-software and POS design.

Edit: And if I was using C or C++ above my lack of capitalization would either evoke an error too OR passably continue foward referencing the wrong variable and result in a similar error to your transposition.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#93

Post by WJW »

nchmy wrote: post #55
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.

Yes, I read the article. I still think it's incorrect. Most software (especially by usage) is already not artisanal. You get the exact same browser, database server and (whatsapp/signal/telegram/whatever) messenger client as basically everyone else. Those are churned out by the millions from a common blueprint and designed by teams and teams of highly skilled specialists using specialized tooling, not so different from the latest iPhone or car.

As such, the article's point fails right at the start when it tries to make the point that software production is not already industrial. It is. But if you look at actual industrial design processes, their equivalent of "writing the code" is relatively small. Quality assurance, compliance to various legal requirements, balancing different requirements for the product at hand, having endless meetings with customer representatives to figure out requirements in the first place, those are where most of the time goes and those are exactly the places where LLMs are not very good. So the part that is already fast will get faster and the slow part will stay slow. That is not a recipe for revolutionary progress.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#94

Post by weslleyskah »

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…

> It's like thinking the greatest barrier to producing the next great Russian literary novel is not speaking Russian. That is merely the first and easiest barrier, but after learning the language you are still no Tolstoy.

And what do you feel is the role of universities? Certainly not just to learn the language right? I'm going through a computer engineering degree and sometimes I feel completely lost with an urge to give up on everything, even though I am still interested in technology.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#95

Post by willtemperley »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #69
willtemperley wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People re-create the same algorithms all the time for different languages or because of license incompatibility. I'm personally doing just that because I want an algorithm written in C++ in a LGPL library working in another language

In fact this is a counter argument to the point of the article. You're not making 'just more throwaway software' but instead building usable software while standing on the shoulders of existing algo's and libraries.

Well yes. To me industrial software is hardened algorithms, not throwaway slop like the author is arguing. LLMs are very good at porting existing algorithms and as you say it’s about standing on the shoulders of giants. I couldn’t write these from scratch but I can port and harden an algo with basic engineering practices.

I like the article except the premise is wrong - industrial software will be high value and low cost as it will outlive the slop.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#96

Post by ofalkaed »

tosapple wrote: post #92
ofalkaed wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occasionally when right clicking on a misspelled word to correct it, I bump the track pad and accidentally add the misspelled word to my dictionary. Business is one of those words I apparently did that with. I have never been able to figure out how to remove words from my dictionary, but honestly never looked that hard, for some ridiculous reason I think people will focus on what was said instead of looking for nits…

I considered it may be a dictionary correction issue but i am sort've railing against the suggestion of current level LLMs being used for tax-software and POS design. Edit: And if I was using C or C++ above my lack of capitalization would either evoke an error too OR passably continue foward referencing the wrong variable and result in a similar error to your transposition.

I said that was something which would happen in the future, as in not the current level LLMs. But this is what people will pay the programmer for, the programmer will (hopefully) know when and where the LLM can be used to offload the grunt work and where they should just skip the LLM and hand code it, those things the average person will not know, the full system and this applies to current level LLMs

Re: The rise of industrial software

#97

Post by tossandthrow »

swiftcoder wrote: post #42
tossandthrow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but decades of feedback, tuning and fixing On the contrary, this is likely the reason why we can disrupt these large players. Experience from 2005 just don't hold that much value in 2025 in tech.

> Experience from 2005 just don't hold that much value in 2025 in tech That would be why a significant portion of the world's critical systems still run on Windows XP, eh?

No, that is likely because there is no economic benefit to do anything about it - definitely not UX concerns.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#98

Post by physicsguy »

I've just done my first almost fully vibe coded hobby project from start to near completion, a village history website with a taxonomy, and it's taken so much poking and prodding and cajoling to get the software to do exactly what I want it to do. Having built plenty of production stuff, I know what I want it to look like and the data model was really clear, yet even trying every trick in the book to constrain them, I just found the LLMs went off and did totally random things, particularly as the project got further from the start.

Maybe there'll be an enormous leap again but I just don't quite see the jump to how this gets you to 'industrial' software. It made it a lot faster, don't get me wrong, but you still needed the captain driving the ship.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#99

Post by tossandthrow »

zkmon wrote: post #45
tossandthrow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but decades of feedback, tuning and fixing On the contrary, this is likely the reason why we can disrupt these large players. Experience from 2005 just don't hold that much value in 2025 in tech.

Software was never coded in a big-bang one shot fashion. It evolves through years of interacting with the field. That evolution takes almost same time with AI or not. Remember a version release has many tasks that need to go at human speed.

On that we agree.

But taking out features are difficult - even when they have near to zero value.

Why it sometimes make sense for new players to enter the market and start over - without the legacy.

This is indeed one of the value propositions in the startup I work in.

Re: The rise of industrial software

#100

Post by estimator7292 »

weslleyskah wrote: post #94
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…

> It's like thinking the greatest barrier to producing the next great Russian literary novel is not speaking Russian. That is merely the first and easiest barrier, but after learning the language you are still no Tolstoy. And what do you feel is the role of universities? Certainly not just to learn the language right? I'm going through a computer engineering degree and sometimes I feel completely lost with an urge to…

One can go to school to learn the literary arts. Many do. A lot of authors do not.

A lot of engineers and programmers did not go to school.

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