[trklausss]

Ah, people are starting to see the light.

This is something that could be distilled from some industries like aviation, where specification of software (requirements, architecture documents, etc.) is even more important that the software itself.

The problem is that natural language is in itself ambiguous, and people don't really grasp the importance of clear specification (how many times I have repeated to put units and tolerances to any limits they specify by requirements).

Another problem is: natural language doesn't have "defaults": if you don't specify something, is open to interpretation. And people _will_ interpret something instead of saying "yep I don't know this".

[datsci_est_2015]

> The problem is that natural language is in itself ambiguous

This is literally what software developers are actually paid to do. They are not paid to write code. This is reinventing software development.

[pessimizer]

IMO, it's clarifying software development. I think ultimately it means that some people who are slightly on the softer side of development will become indistinguishable from other developers, and people on the more mechanical side of development will disappear.

If what you do can be done by the systematic manipulation of symbols, we have a better system for that now. If the spec they hand to you has to be so specific that you don't have to think while implementing it, we have a machine that can do everything except think that can handle that.

[datsci_est_2015]

> If the spec they hand to you has to be so specific that you don't have to think while implementing it

Does this exist in 2026? I feel like, at least in my bubble, expectations on individual developers has never been higher. I feel like the cut has already been made.

[mike_hearn]

You can use LLMs as specification compilers. They are quite good at finding ambiguities in specs and writing out lists of questions for the author to answer, or inferring sensible defaults in explicitly called out ways.

[UncleEntity]

Yeah, if you can somehow convince them you really, really want them to follow the specification and not just do whatever they want.

And is doesn't matter how many times you tell them the implementation and, more importantly, the tests needs to 100% follow the spec they'll still write tests to match the buggy code or just ignore bugs completely until you call them out on it and/or watch them like a hawk.

Maybe I'm just holding it wrong, who knows?

[nxobject]

Time to bring out the flowcharts again!