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Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

386 points · 410 comments · yusyd

  1. xtajv · · focus · HN ↗
    I do not appreciate when authors use the royal "we" to speak for all software engineers when admitting to low quality-control standards.

    I suspect that it is an attempt to broach an uncomfortable topic through vulnerable self-disclosure, but we need to be serious about admitting when there is a problem somewhere.

    "Bugs" are not any more cute or fuzzy or entertaining or harmless than the engine "gremlins" that haunted the aviation industry back in the day.

    I don't know how many accidents had to happen before the airplane people got serious, but software people are overdue for a similar reckoning.

    1. Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
      I just want to point out this is not a royal "we". It's a regular "we". Royal "we" is when you say "we" but mean a singular person, yourself. Here, the author does actually mean multiple people beyond themselves - like you pointed out, they claim to speak for all software engineers.
      1. lmm · · focus · HN ↗
        No, that is exactly GP's complaint. Their whole point is that OP has written things like "we throw everything at a model and hope it gives us what we imagined, without ever having to understand how any of it actually works" when the honest statement would be "I throw everything at a model and hope it gives me what I imagined, without ever having to understand how any of it actually works".
        1. Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
          Yes I understand the complaint. It's just that "royal we" means something else.
          1. lmm · · focus · HN ↗
            Talking about the "royal we" is a correct, established (if somewhat sarcastic) way to complain about this kind of usage. It highlights the presumptiveness of the author in their use of "we".
            1. brianmcc · · focus · HN ↗
              No it doesn't. It comes from the Queen saying "We are not amused" to mean "I specifically am not amused".
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