Software Engineering fundamentals matter more

(rhonabwy.com)

54 points by ingve6 hours ago

2 comments

  • mortalapeman19 minutes ago
    With generated code, the directory structure, interface design and general state management is usually a haphazard mess. Even with the best frontier models. But what really gets me is the model often tries to make assumptions for me that I didn't specify in the prompt. Subtle things like which error states are "oh shit we need to bail" vs "this isn't a deal breaker." Sometimes it will ask, but more often than not it will just make a decision and it's often the wrong one. If I don't have a fully kitted out test suit and a good type checker to verify the final product against, the the whole looping thing is just useless to me and I'm back to reviewing every line of code it puts out and having to draw on my years of architecture experience to make sure we don't build a giant pile of trash.
    • Gigachad3 minutes ago
      Because they are designed to be used by managers who don't know how to answer these questions and don't want to be asked them. Just have the magic answers box pick something.
  • hirvi7458 minutes ago
    &gt; <i>In the past year, agent harnesses crossed the “can it be done” rubicon.</i><p>Brother, I&#x27;m still in &quot;Can you get it right?&quot;-mode. What am I doing wrong? (Rhetorical, but advice welcomed).
    • al_borland24 minutes ago
      I’ve found some success is small projects, with limited scope, in a greenfield.<p>I’m terrified to attempt agentic anything in the repo my job actually cares about. I triggered it once by accident, when the agent was first rolled out and enabled by default… it broke everything. Now I just use ask mode, and even that is wrong half the time, and once it goes wrong it just keeps getting worse.<p>I saw a post from Dave Plumber who vibe coded up a new cross platform task manager. He said his spec document for the AI was 107 pages long. So maybe what I’m doing wrong is not giving the AI a literal novel of spec.
    • MattGaiser32 minutes ago
      What is “it” specifically and what languages are you using?