Comment by tptacek
6 days ago
Woodworking is also an art form. But most people just need furniture, fixtures, and structures. Nobody would take seriously the idea that new construction all be done with sashimono joinery in order to preserve the art form, but somehow we're meant to take seriously the idea of hand-dovetailed CRUD apps.
> Woodworking is also an art form. But most people just need furniture, fixtures, and structures. Nobody would take seriously the idea that new construction all be done with sashimono joinery in order to preserve the art form, but somehow we're meant to take seriously the idea of hand-dovetailed CRUD apps.
How many furniture makers did you talk to forming this opinion? The metaphor does not line up with either my software of furniture experience. I work with production furniture shops that choose not to use CNCs to avoid the soul being sucked out of the work. This is not a rare stance to take and this is not "japanese joinery" woodworking. This is real work, balancing the means of production with optimal quality. There is all sorts of arguments on whether cncs or using a domino or whatever is "real" woodworking, but the idea that this choice of quality does not exist in woodworking and so we shouldn't have it in software is not my experience.
You don't need to talk to furniture makers to know that mass produced furniture has replaced cabinetmakery almost completely. Most of us are sitting on the evidence.
It is not about being mass produced or not–it is this reoccurring theme by people who do not spend their days writing code saying that mediocre code is good enough. It is not for me. Code decays. Mediocre code today is bade code tomorrow. Not everyone shares this pov–totally fine–but the tone of the article is tough.
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I don't think that analogy matches very well. Most software is bespoke, the domain requirements, usage aspects, and architectural trade-offs are subtly, or often non-subtly, different each time, and take different trajectories over time. It's not like you're producing the same software 10,000 times, like a piece of furniture. And AI isn't able to produce the exact same thing reproducibly anyway. A better argument would be that AI is actually approaching the craftsmanship/artisanal capabilities.
Most line of business apps and business logic are only bespoke and custom insofar as field names and relations and what APIs they trigger on which events.
Just because software is “bespoke” doesn’t mean it’s complicated or special.
> Most line of business apps and business logic are only bespoke and custom insofar as field names and relations and what APIs they trigger on which events.
That's not my experience. Of course, everything is just a finite state machine operating on a memory tape.
I'm not sure why you're equivocating "all code" with "CRUD apps". If that were the case I'd be with you. But it isn't. Glue code between APIs is indeed pointless garbage that can be automated, but that's not what I, nor many other engineers, are writing day-to-day.