Comment by QuadrupleA
3 hours ago
Side note, everyone's talking about having AI agents "conform to the spec" these days. Am I in my own bubble, or - who the hell these days gets The Spec as a well-formed document? Let alone a good document, something that can be formally verified, thouroughly test-cased, can christen the software "complete" when all its boxes are ticked, etc.?
This seems like 1980's corporate waterfall thinking, doesn't jibe with the messy reality I've seen with customers, unclear ideas, changing market and technical environments, the need for iteration and experimentation, mid-course correction, etc.
> who the hell these days gets The Spec as a well-formed document?
The PMs asked ChatGPT to write a well-formed spec.
Sadly, true in too many companies right now.
I do agree with your general point that The Spec can become a crutch for washing your hands of any responsibility for knowing the product, the goals, the company's business, and other contexts. I like to defuse these ideas by reminding the engineers that The Spec is a living document and they are partially responsible for it, too. Once everyone learns that The Spec isn't a crutch for shifting all blame to the product manager, they become more involved in making sure it's right.