Comment by monkpit
8 hours ago
> Humans who have been writing systems like that for many years know how to maintain and modify them successfully.
Do they??
8 hours ago
> Humans who have been writing systems like that for many years know how to maintain and modify them successfully.
Do they??
Yeah... in my experience people who code like that 'successfully' make modifications that fix an immediate problem while kicking another bug or two further down the road in a never-ending sunk-cost-fallacy of job security...
I believe this type of person exists.
My team lead has worked on the same software for 30 years. He has the ability to hear me discuss a bug I noticed, and then pinpoint not only the likely culprit, but the exact function that's causing it.
I do the same thing in a project I’ve worked on for 25 years. I’ve had mediocre at best results with AI. It’s useful to discuss concepts with, but the code never handles the nuances of the edge cases.
Then they quit or die.
What is your argument? Should we stop training people on how to do something because we're mortals?
Yep this is like comparing master craftsmanship with a production line. You're gonna get good attention to detail and a masterpiece from one, and a limited thing that will break after few years from the other. But for majority of use cases the second one is enough. And pointing out the master craftsmanship is "better" is besides the point.
And with one you need to train a guy for 25 years and with the other you need plan mode for a few minutes and then it runs 24/7.
7 replies →
Yes.
There is a lot of absurdly complex software that runs with high reliability. We hear a lot about the ones that don’t.