For over half a century now, computer scientists have been trying to mould #software development into an engineering discipline, without success.
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@AmenZwa The art of #medicine also remains an art despite the best efforts of #science to avoid it... and sadly #AI is being used in the latest efforts...
In the end both fields will remain arts I imagine. And I think that is good.
Thinking about the reasons makes me think that "the art of electronics" should be expanded to become the art of computer science. It is unfortunate the word science is even in the title.
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For over half a century now, computer scientists have been trying to mould #software development into an engineering discipline, without success. Software practice firmly remains an art form that does not yield to formalisation.
Software Engineering problem might well be a corollary of Hilbert’s #Entscheidungsproblem.
@AmenZwa From a management point of view, software project cost and schedule are both highly variable. So, why not just throw it at an AI? The project cost and schedule will definitely improve. The quality will likely suffer, but having a single unpredictable variable, rather than three, is an obvious improvement. A narrower risk is much easier to manage.
We wouldn't be here if software project 'engineering' weren't such a shitstorm.
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For over half a century now, computer scientists have been trying to mould #software development into an engineering discipline, without success. Software practice firmly remains an art form that does not yield to formalisation.
Software Engineering problem might well be a corollary of Hilbert’s #Entscheidungsproblem.
@AmenZwa
People who call themselves software engineers get very angry with me when I say that, to a first approximation, software engineering does not exist, and that the little bit of it that does actually exist is only very rarely used in practice. -
@AmenZwa
People who call themselves software engineers get very angry with me when I say that, to a first approximation, software engineering does not exist, and that the little bit of it that does actually exist is only very rarely used in practice.@AmenZwa
Some try to claim that "agile" is engineering. No, it is a methodology for managing a development process. I ask them whether they'd be comfortable flying in an aircraft designed by people who don't know anything about actual aerospace engineering, but used story points and stand-ups and sprints to develop it. -
@AmenZwa From a management point of view, software project cost and schedule are both highly variable. So, why not just throw it at an AI? The project cost and schedule will definitely improve. The quality will likely suffer, but having a single unpredictable variable, rather than three, is an obvious improvement. A narrower risk is much easier to manage.
We wouldn't be here if software project 'engineering' weren't such a shitstorm.
@skewray IT managers are always too eager to replace programmers with AI. But the most promising use of AI is to replace the managers up and down the chain with it.
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@AmenZwa
Some try to claim that "agile" is engineering. No, it is a methodology for managing a development process. I ask them whether they'd be comfortable flying in an aircraft designed by people who don't know anything about actual aerospace engineering, but used story points and stand-ups and sprints to develop it.@brouhaha Let us all imagine aerospace engineers use the Agile Method to build an airliner: who needs requirements, analysis, design, and the like, when we can start building immediately, by a few teams of paired engineers!
Oh wait, Boeing did just that, didn’t they?
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@skewray IT managers are always too eager to replace programmers with AI. But the most promising use of AI is to replace the managers up and down the chain with it.
@AmenZwa If a project fails, the most likely cause (IMHO) is management. So, yes, that does seems like a rational approach. After all, management already hallucinates their own sense of control.
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@brouhaha Let us all imagine aerospace engineers use the Agile Method to build an airliner: who needs requirements, analysis, design, and the like, when we can start building immediately, by a few teams of paired engineers!
Oh wait, Boeing did just that, didn’t they?
@AmenZwa @brouhaha SpaveX as well. Just that Boeing employed the method badly.
SpaceX went on and destroyed multiple rockets, iterating until the damn thing landed.
They also tested their capsule as freight transporter first.
Boeing: we are the best, we need no iterations. Deploy to staging immediately. -
@AmenZwa @brouhaha SpaveX as well. Just that Boeing employed the method badly.
SpaceX went on and destroyed multiple rockets, iterating until the damn thing landed.
They also tested their capsule as freight transporter first.
Boeing: we are the best, we need no iterations. Deploy to staging immediately.@gunstick
Quite right!Similarly,
IT coder: Generate by LLM the code that performs some complex phenomena that no one understands, then immediately deploy to production.
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@AmenZwa
Some try to claim that "agile" is engineering. No, it is a methodology for managing a development process. I ask them whether they'd be comfortable flying in an aircraft designed by people who don't know anything about actual aerospace engineering, but used story points and stand-ups and sprints to develop it.My point wasn't that agile is good or bad, just that it isn't a substitute for any other aspect of development. Using agile doesn't make software development into "engineering".
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@AmenZwa @brouhaha german saying: "Produkt reift beim Kunden" (the product ripes at the customer hands)
Future:
The vibe coding company pushes fresh code directly to prod (smartphones).
Customers give reviews.
Reviews are fed back to the AI.
Hours later a new vibe coded version is pushed out.
As you can imagine, there is nobody working at the vibe coding company.Some years later someone manages to hack the AI with a nicely crafted bug report.
The world explodes. -
@AmenZwa @brouhaha german saying: "Produkt reift beim Kunden" (the product ripes at the customer hands)
Future:
The vibe coding company pushes fresh code directly to prod (smartphones).
Customers give reviews.
Reviews are fed back to the AI.
Hours later a new vibe coded version is pushed out.
As you can imagine, there is nobody working at the vibe coding company.Some years later someone manages to hack the AI with a nicely crafted bug report.
The world explodes. -
My point wasn't that agile is good or bad, just that it isn't a substitute for any other aspect of development. Using agile doesn't make software development into "engineering".
Indeed!
The “agile” concept is an invention of the IT crowd, not CS, not maths, not physics, not EE.
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Indeed!
The “agile” concept is an invention of the IT crowd, not CS, not maths, not physics, not EE.
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