[PeterWhittaker]

One important and often overlooked democratization is spreadsheet formulas: non-programmers began programming without knowing they were, and without concern for error and edge cases. I cannot find the reference right now, but I recall seeing years ago articles about how mistakes in spreadsheet formulae were costing millions or more.

I see an analog with AI-generated code: the disciplined among us know we are programming and consider error and edge cases, the rest don't.

Will the AIs get good enough so they/we won't have to? Or will people realize they are programming and discipline up?

[analog31]

I have a feeling that the cost of bad / inefficient / late software runs into at least the billions. The biggest risks are unavoidably attached to the most costly software projects, that are probably the most likely to be conducted in the most sophisticated and professional fashion with the latest silver bullet methodologies.

The Mythical Man Month is just over half a century old, yet still reads like it was written yesterday.

[nurettin]

> began programming without knowing they were

Worse, they were doing functional programming just by chaining formulas without side effects, surpassing the skills of most self-proclaimed programmers out there.

[rsynnott]

A particularly alarming case: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

And then of course there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt#Metho...

> Or will people realize they are programming and discipline up?

Well, they apparently haven't with spreadsheets, 50 years on, so I wouldn't be optimistic.

[mold_aid]

>Or will people realize they are programming and discipline up?

Or will there be coding across disciplines, and attendant theories of literacies in context?

What I like about the OP is the consonance with literate practices, which has gone through similar generations of "our children don't know how to [...]" alongside of "our children will not need to [...] because of the machines."

[simonw]

I often think about how the modern world genuinely does run on Excel formulas, many written by amateurs, most without automated tests and with version control based on final_final_v2 suffixes.

Somehow civilization continues to function!

Makes me a bit less terrified that untested vibe coded slop will sink the economy. It's not that different from how things work already.

[guitarbill]

One counter-example is the Horizon IT scandal. Obviously, you didn't say this directly, but "only a few people died/were affected, somehow civilization continues to function" maybe isn't the best argument.

[simonw]

Sure, that scandal was horrific. I don't think the root cause was amateurs with bad spreadsheets.

It was an institutional failure, and the software involved had hundreds of millions of pounds spent on it and was built by supposed professionals.

[guitarbill]

Sure, we can ignore that specific example, and that software has an effect on the world, and that people have been trained to expect software to be deterministic and accurate.

Or if you want compare vibe coding with any technology, like electricity. Sure, that one person got electrocuted or their house burned down. But it's just so useful, and "somehow civilization continues to function". I guess they should've known better.

I'm personally not comfortable hyping up the benefits whilst ignoring the risks, especially for lay people.

[krisoft]

> we can ignore that specific example

We are not ignoring it. It is just not an example of a load bearing excel sheet.

[richm44]

Try this https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how...

[SteveNuts]

> Makes me a bit less terrified that untested vibe coded slop will sink the economy.

The difference is those spreadsheets were buried on a company internal fileshare and the blast radius would be contained to that organization.

Today vibe coders can type a prompt, click a button, and their thing is exposed directly to the internet and ready to suck up any data someone uploads.

[rsynnott]

In which spreadsheet slop arguably sinks the economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt#Metho...

(This paper was extremely influential in pushing austerity policies of questionable efficacy during the financial crisis.)

We don't want _more_ of this.

[otabdeveloper4]

> Somehow civilization continues to function!

Citation needed, I think.

[hearsathought]

> non-programmers began programming without knowing they were

Using excel in the traditional sense isn't the same as programming. Unless they were doing some VBA or something like that which the vast majority of excel/spreadsheet users don't.

> spreadsheet formulae

formulas. We aren't speaking latin here.

> I see an analog with AI-generated code: the disciplined among us know we are programming and consider error and edge cases, the rest don't.

Programming isn't really about edge cases or errors.

[SoftTalker]

Excel was the biggest example of a "4GL" that actually succeeded. They mentioned Access but Excel was by far more widely used. Excel enabled analysts to do so much on their own that they used to have to ask programmers in their IT department to do. Other spreadsheets too, at first, but Excel ended up dominating.

[elzbardico]

And it was an excellent local optimization that incurred giant costs for the whole organization. Every single place where there are this parallel excel IT world is a fucking security/compliance/data-security nightmare.

[PeterWhittaker]

> formulas. We aren't speaking latin here.

Define "here", please! Perhaps your "here" and mine differ, but the view from my here is that while all three plurals are generally acceptable, formulae is the correcter double plus good spelling for this context.