I don't understand what is supposed to come next. So its not Ruby on Rails anymore. What is it? Are agents going to magically convert all the RoR ecosystem to Rust or Whatever?
But yes, I think RoR's selling feature was developer ergonomics, which suddenly seems less of a benefit if developers aren't the ones writing the code. Readability and conciseness still has benefit, but the trade-off of worse performance (and less static checking) is suddenly more questionable.
Have a look at fly.io facing similar issues, another platform whose value prop was dev ergonomics: <a href="https://fly.io/blog/kurt-scott-money-sprites/" rel="nofollow">https://fly.io/blog/kurt-scott-money-sprites/
Shit, I'm also hosting with them. Somehow I missed that post. I've been watching Kurt's AI-pillness advancing over time, but I didn't expect it to metastasize so quickly.
What a strange time. Kurt himself writes that they've had the best quarter ever, and yet he feels confident enough to steer the ship in a completely new direction.
> Readability and conciseness still has benefit, but the trade-off of worse performance (and less static checking) is suddenly more questionable.
There is an issue with this idea - we write software, we read it, we make sure it does what it should do, that it’s implement in a sensible and efficient way, and, most importantly, we make sure the tests do what they should do.
If you no longer write the code, it’s harder to understand it. If you don’t write the tests, you need to trust the LLM did both jobs correctly (multiple adversarial LLMs can help), but, ultimately, it’s code you can no longer claim you understand. And you can’t really be sure it does what you want until you understand it.
Microsoft has a huge market share, and immense testing and QA resources, and it’s reasonable to assume this has driven down the number of unknown issues a lot.
That said, why do we think compilers produce correct code?
Write a solid piece of software by hand. Spend 20 plus years working all the bugs out and perfecting it. Build a giant community around it. Then use llms to rewrite it in another language, as the last step. Once that becomes unmaintainable, and there really is no community you can start over again by writing another working piece of software in a new language, perfecting it, building out a large community and then at the final step translate again with an llm, repeat.
I think what's next is the harness. Ruby on Rails brought conventions to web development. It could morph into brining conventions to building any kind of software using AI. AI on Rails. Many such efforts already exist and perhaps in short order such a project would be obsolete, but it's one potential path forward.
lbrito · · focus · HN ↗
usef- · · focus · HN ↗
But yes, I think RoR's selling feature was developer ergonomics, which suddenly seems less of a benefit if developers aren't the ones writing the code. Readability and conciseness still has benefit, but the trade-off of worse performance (and less static checking) is suddenly more questionable.
Have a look at fly.io facing similar issues, another platform whose value prop was dev ergonomics: <a href="https://fly.io/blog/kurt-scott-money-sprites/" rel="nofollow">https://fly.io/blog/kurt-scott-money-sprites/
lbrito · · focus · HN ↗
What a strange time. Kurt himself writes that they've had the best quarter ever, and yet he feels confident enough to steer the ship in a completely new direction.
rbanffy · · focus · HN ↗
If you don’t build the product that’ll kill your cash cow, your competitors will.
rbanffy · · focus · HN ↗
There is an issue with this idea - we write software, we read it, we make sure it does what it should do, that it’s implement in a sensible and efficient way, and, most importantly, we make sure the tests do what they should do.
If you no longer write the code, it’s harder to understand it. If you don’t write the tests, you need to trust the LLM did both jobs correctly (multiple adversarial LLMs can help), but, ultimately, it’s code you can no longer claim you understand. And you can’t really be sure it does what you want until you understand it.
NetMageSCW · · focus · HN ↗
rbanffy · · focus · HN ↗
That said, why do we think compilers produce correct code?
lovedaddy · · focus · HN ↗
Everything is a nail at the moment.
Like people using LLMs to refactor. Refactoring is a solved problem, we've had decades to get nice tooling for this.
plant-ian · · focus · HN ↗
seanabrahams · · focus · HN ↗
segfaltnh · · focus · HN ↗