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  • 8 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 19th, 2023
  • spartanatreyu@programming.devtoProgramming@programming.dev•do we need documentation in the age of AI?
    1·
    3 hours ago

    For .one-off web page that is true

    There’s not really any such thing as a one off web page.

    It’s eventually going to need to be updated or reused for something else.

    The only exceptions being if your company goes under, force majure, or if you have something with the same requirements but choose to make the same thing again from scratch for no real reason , which is just being inefficient and unreasonable.

    Also the latest models don’t even make a mess any more.

    Yeah… I’m calling bullshit on that, all four projects I was handed was made by the latest models and it will continue being an issue for the foreseeable future. (see a previous comment of mine for reasoning: https://programming.dev/post/57569685/26398217)

  • spartanatreyu@programming.devtoProgramming@programming.dev•do we need documentation in the age of AI?
    1·
    12 hours ago

    E.g. for one-off web page design it’s been good enough for a long time.

    In just the last two months, I’ve been handed the following web projects:

    • A page filled with bootstrap style div-soup
    • A page filled with tailwind style class-soup
    • A slideshow webapp that has duplicated state and three different ways to change slides (navigate(), goTo(), and changeSlide()).
    • A slop-grenade of a chatbot interface for navigating a user through a flow chart, documentation of the flow chart, and documentation of the logic of the flow chart, all of which conflict with each other.

    I think the effect you’re seeing is that different people have different levels of “good enough”

    I think the effect that I’m seeing is twofold:

    1. People don’t realise that every line of code is a liability.
    2. People think that once they have something on the screen that looks finished, the project is finished. They haven’t thought about support or maintainability at all, and since they are completely inexperienced about such things: they aren’t qualified enough to when when a project is “even done”, let alone “good enough”.
  • spartanatreyu@programming.devtoProgramming@programming.dev•do we need documentation in the age of AI?
    41·
    1 day ago

    It’s clear you have no idea what you’re talking about. […] You do understand that this is a rapidly developing technology right? That it’s getting better weekly?

    This is literally the retort that moves the goalposts.

    You can’t just bury your head in the sand and tell yourself that LLMs are still just “advanced autocomplete” anymore.

    I made no claim that LLMs haven’t changed, I make the claim that others are making claims that fall apart once examined.

    The claims others make:

    1. AI is amazing because now it can make this thing

    2. Oh, the only reason doesn’t hold up to scrutiny this one time is because of {insert goal post moving here}.

    Argument 1 falls apart when looking inside the product (i.e. the shit sandwich, the slop grenade, etc…).

    Argument 2 is circular, so I’m not going to waste time on it.

    But just for the sake of argument, lets say there’s some sudden release of a model tomorrow that runs one million times better than today’s best model and everyone only uses that model from now on. Will I still be handed a shit sandwich?

    Yes.

    Why?

    Because the fact that I’m handed a shit sandwich isn’t influenced by how good the model is. It’s based on the fact that English is a terrible language for logic.

    We discovered this in the 60s and 70s. Computer programming was too hard in the 50s and only getting harder, so everyone got together and tried to make a programming language out of English, that way everyone could do it. That’s literally how the Cobol language came to be. It was sold to everyone on the idea that anyone could create something with a fuzzy human readable language called English.

    What did we learn? English is both a terrible programming language and a terrible specification language, Non-programmers (managers, general workers, etc…) fall prey to things like the xy problem, understanding gaps, intention gaps, etc… and so can’t end up with a new good product by giving orders. The scars of that delusion are still felt in our banking system today. Every lesson learned by Non-programmers in the goal of getting a good program turns them lesson by lesson into programmers, and at that point you’re just programming by hand anyway.

    The same lessons were rediscovered in the 80s by people trying to program by spreadsheets and GUI-only app builders, the 2010s with the no code movement, it’s currently being rediscovered in the 2020s with LLMs, and it’ll be rediscovered again by a new generation in the 2040s once those with the experience and learned wisdom of last time retire out of the industry and the few remaining are outnumbered and dismissed as religious zealots.