[pavel_lishin]

But are those sweeping generalizations true?

> I’m also going to be making some sweeping statements about “how software works”, these claims mostly hold, but they break down when applied to distributed systems, parallel code, or complex interactions between software systems and human processes.

I'd argue that this describes most software written since, uh, I hesitate to even commit to a decade here.

[SalientBlue]

For the purposes of the article, which is to demonstrate how developing an LLM is completely different from developing traditional software, I'd say they are true enough. It's a CS 101 understanding of the software development lifecycle, which for non-technical readers is enough to get the point across. An accurate depiction of software development would only obscure the actual point for the lay reader.

[hedora]

At least the 1950’s. That’s when stuff like asynchrony and interrupts were worked out. Dijkstra wrote at length about this in reference to writing code that could drive a teletype (which had fundamentally non-deterministic timings).

If you include analog computers, then there are some WWII targeting computers that definitely qualify (e.g., on aircraft carriers).