Javier Pérez

@hanshuebner @plexus "The qualities that software exposes on the outside are largely independent of its inner workings." Sorry, but this can't be further away form truth. Our 70+ years pile of empirical evidence says otherwise. The whole history of software engineering is about how to manage and improve internal quality in order to result in good external quality.

@plexus Thank you for expressing this out loud, Arne!

@hanshuebner @jmax We can agree that the primary purpose of a software system is the functionality it provides, but "Code is primarily consumed by machines" is not fully true. Code is RUN by machines but it is still, and it will be for a long time, primarily consumed, as in written and read and changed by humans (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6341736-any-fool-can-write-code-that-a-computer-can-understand) And code that cannot be changed will eventually stop being useful (Lehman's 1st law of software evolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman%27s_laws_of_software_evolution)

@hanshuebner indeed. Your experience checks-out and is aligned with what we are seeing as the bigger picture. Good programmers and high-performing organisations, that were already doing great without LLM-based gen AI, are seeing some performance boost. But, for the rest, using these tools is resulting in none, or negative impact. Funny, this means that widening the adoption of proved good and effective software engineering practices is more positively impactful than using gen-AI

@hanshuebner It doesn't matter what I think, really, but what we know so far, with some degree of well-founded evidence: "Speed at the Cost of Quality" -> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hao-he-91760b140_speed-at-the-cost-of-quality-how-cursor-activity-7422355920891928578-wyKG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAEI4vEBzlSIOGsnBtiXZ-jICI-U7Tp9frw

@hanshuebner What I meant is that, for now and with the evidence we have, our ability to maintain and evolve a software system still depends on humans being able to do it. You are right, a single paper means nothing, but evidence is build up by the accumulated findings of many studies like this. I can pull others but the paper I referenced is relevant, because, a) it's quite recent, b) it's published in the current top conference on empirical software engineering

@aral@mastodon.ar.al and following with your last metaphor, with the vending machine, at least, you know what you got is edible