Comment by nchmy
8 hours ago
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.
I think the author of the post envisions more code authoring automation, more generated code/test/deployment, exponentially more. To the degree what we have now would be "quaint", as he says.
Your point that most software uses the same browsers, databases, tooling and internal libraries is a weakness, a sameness that can be exploited by current AI, to push that automation capability much further. Hell, why even bother with any of the generated code and infrastructure being "human readable" anymore? (Of course, all kinds of reasons that is bad, but just watch that "innovation" get a marketing push and take off. Which would only mean we'd need viewing software to make whatever was generated readable - as if anyone would read to understand hundreds/millions of generated complex anything.)
LLMs produce human readable output because they learn from human readable input. It's a feature. It allows it to be much less precise than byte code, for example, which wouldn't help at all.
I guess two things can be true at the same time. And I think AI will likely matter a lot more than detractors think, and nowhere near as much as enthusiasts think.
Perhaps a good analogy is the spreadsheet. It was a complete shift in the way that humans interacted with numbers. From accounting to engineering to home budgets - there are few people who haven't used a spreadsheet to "program" the computer at some point.
It's a fantastic tool, but has limits. It's also fair to say people use (abuse) spreadsheets far beyond those limits. It's a fantastic tool for accounting, but real accounting systems exist for a reason.
Similarly AI will allow lots more people to "program" their computer. But making the programing task go away just exposes limitations in other parts of the "development" process.
To your analogy I don't think AI does mass-produced paperbacks. I think it is the equivalent of writing a novel for yourself. People don't sell spreadsheets, they use them. AI will allow people to write programs for themselves, just like digital cameras turned us all into photographers. But when we need it "done right" we'll still turn to people with honed skills.
> your analogy I don't think AI does mass-produced paperbacks
It's the article's analogy, not mine.
And, are you really saying that people aren't regularly mass-vibing terrible software that others use...? That seems to be a primary use case...
Though, yes, I'm sure it'll become more common for many people to vibe their own software - even if just tiny, temporary, fit-for-purpose things.
I think existing skilled programmers are leveraging AI to increase productivity.
I think there are some people with limited, or no, programming experience who are vibe coding small apps out of nothing. But I think this is a tiny fraction of people. As much as the AI might write code, the tools used to do that, plus compile, distribute etc are still very developer focused.
Sure, one day my pastor might be able to download and install some complete environment which allows him to create something.
Maybe it'll design the database for him, plus install and maintain the local database server for him (or integrate with a cloud service.)
Maybe it'll get all the necessary database and program security right.
Maybe it'll integrate well with other systems, from email to text-import and export. Maybe that will all be maintainable as external services change.
Maybe it'll be able to do support when the printing stops working, or it all needs to be moved to a new machine.
Maybe this environment will be stable enough for the years and decades that the program will be used for. Maybe updating or adding to the program along the way won't break existing things.
Maybe it'll work so well it can be distributed to others.
All this without my pastor even needing to understand what a "variable" is.
That day may come. But, as well as it might or might not write code today, we're a long long way from this future. Mass producing software is a lot more than writing code.
> Theyre explicitly saying that most software will no longer be artisianal - a great literary novel - and instead become industrialized
Sure, but they're predicting something that happened years and years ago.
Once you industrialize, labor reductions and cheaper machinery are the norm. This author is either overselling a step in that curve or writing singularity fanfic with extra steps.
This was already true before LLMs. "Artisinal software" was never the norm. The tsunami of crap just got a bit bigger.
Unlike clothing, software always scaled. So, it's a bit wrongheaded to assume that the new economics would be more like the economics of clothing after mass production. An "artisanal" dress still only fits one person. "Artisanal" software has always served anywhere between zero people and millions.
LLMs are not the spinning jenny. They are not an industrial revolution, even if the stock market valuations assume that they are.
Agreed, software was always kind of mediocre. This is expected given the massive first mover advantage effect. Quality is irrelevant when speed to market is everything.
Unlike speed to market it doesnt manifest in an obvious way but I've watched several companies lose significant market share because they didnt appreciate software quality.