[reaperducer]

This is engineering, more or less.

People who build bridges for a living shake their heads in dismay.

[qsera]

At least bridges come in the realm of unchanging physics and unchanging material behavior. There is only so much variety in building bridges.

Software on the other hand...

You see, the difference is that with building bridges, there is no value in building a "Toy" bridge that does not require any real knowledge. But even toy software can bring huge value. But that does not mean it does not require engineering discipline to build non-toy software.

Software engineering is not about learning libraries or tools. It is the art and science of managing complexity under constant change.

[bdcravens]

They already were well before LLMs.

    myFramework new myCoolStartup
    myFramework generate dataModel
    myFramework generate controllerForModel
    myPackageManager install coolViewWidgets
    # insert glue code I learned on Youtube here
    git push coolPaaS myBranch

[reaperducer]

If LLMs doesn't fix things, why are we spending trillions of dollars boiling the ocean?

[petcat]

The bridge architects and engineers are not the ones hammering in the nails.

[reaperducer]

Clearly you have never worked in heavy industry, or you would know that the word "build" is used at all levels, all the way up to architect and real estate development level. Example:

https://www.buildordie.com/ (Build or Die is the web site for a mid-sized architecture firm.)

[giancarlostoro]

Before AI we have seen drastic drops in software quality across the board, even Windows has been going downhill for several major versions now.

[reaperducer]

What's your point?

You seem to be implying that since the current wave of AI started that things have gotten better. That is demonstrably, repeatedly, and completely false. Just cruise the HN front page and watch the AI fails scroll by.

That you point to Windows getting bad over the years, and the fact that it continues to get worse with the full AI buy-in of Microsoft, shows that AI is not some magical software savior.

[giancarlostoro]

When something is wrong everyone complains, when nothing is wrong you rarely hear a peep. I've either shipped to production or helped others ship "AI Slop" code as would be blindly described by others, despite me reviewing it and testing it. I've first hand seen AI-first greenfield projects go into production and help small businesses achieve more sales and success, heck I reviewed such code for a relative who is now hiring developers and lets them AI code so long as they review, because it gave him something no software company in his market would offer.