> It is much closer to proper engineering.

I would not equate software engineering to "proper" engineering insofar as being uttered in the same sentence as mechanical, chemical, or electrical engineering.

The cost of code is collapsing because web development is not broadly rigorous, robust software was never a priority, and everyone knows it. The people complaining that AI isn't good enough yet don't grasp that neither are many who are in the profession currently.

> The people complaining that AI isn't good enough yet don't grasp that neither are many who are in the profession currently.

I think the externalities are being ignored. Having time and money to train engineers is expensive. Having all the data of your users being stolen is a slap in the wrist.

So replacing those bad worekrs with AI is fine. Unless you remove the incentives to be fast instead of good, then yeah AI can be good enough for some cases.

Indeed, it's like those complaining self-driving cars occasionally crash when their crash rates are up to 90% less than humans . . .

Something that isn't touched on as much is that in the time between old-school native apps and Electron apps is design systems and brand language have become much more prevalent, and implementing native UI often results in compromising design, and brand elements. Most applications used to look more or less the same, nowadays two apps on the same computer can look completely different. No one wants to compromise on design.

This mentality creates a worse experience for end users because all applications have their own conventions and no one wants to be dictated to what good UX is. The best UX in every single instance I've encountered is consistency. Sure, some old UIs were obtuse (90% weren't) but they were obtuse in predictable ways that someone could reasonably navigate. The argument here is between platform consistency and application consistency. Should all apps on the platform look the same, or should the app look the same on all platforms?

edit: grammar

> The best UX in every single instance I've encountered is consistency.

While I agree that consistency is hugely important, I have also seen a lot of cases where it made the UX worse. The reason is that, unfortunately, UX isn't so simple. There isn't a single UX rule that is always true. UX design rules (best practices, guidelines, or principles) are a good starting point, but in a lot of situations multiple rules are conflicting each other. UI/UX design is dealing with tradeoffs most of the time. Good designer will know when breaking a specific rule will actually improve the UX.

Consistency is very important, but sometimes a custom UI element will be the best tool for the job. For example, imagine UI for seat selection in a movie theater ticket booking app. A consistent design would mean using standard controls users are already familiar with, but no standard control will provide high quality UX in this situation (not without heavy modifications).

But I still I agree with you that a lot of bad UX is due to inconsistency. There needs to be a good reason each time consistency broken and often it is broken for the wrong reasons.

If I look at the Notion and Linear desktop apps, they’re essentially identical in styling and design. They’re often considered the best of today’s web/Electron productivity apps, and they have converged on a style that’s basically what Apple had five years ago.

IMO that’s a fairly strong argument that the branding was always unnecessary, and apps would have been better off built from a common set of UI components following uniform human interface guidelines.

I do notice those things occupying your "essentially," and your "basically." The success of worse designed stuff is a hard thing to argue against, though.

  > No one wants to compromise on design.

I, the user, would totally want that.

The user is at the bottom of the stakeholder list.

It's only creepy if you are a creep.

That's exactly right, you've got to be an unmistakable gentleman, which is just the opposite.

As everybody knows that's still often not enough, but why shoot yourself in the foot when you're trying to put your best foot forward?

I'll never forget the day some sophisticated gentlemen came to my school and introduced one of their big hit songs that night.

How there's 5 little words so many single women love to hear, "Hey Girl, What's Your Name?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09w6_q0Chxk

If you look at the lyrics it is a bit straightforward for the 21st century, I think the best approach now is to compress it to only 4 words, "Hi, What's Your Name?".

Even that can be a bit much in the wrong situation, so it can be good to seek out the opposite type of situation :)

You might keep that on your mind but from there let things try to imply the rest of the lyrics, especially the part that goes "Can I Be Your Friend?"

>As everybody knows that's still often not enough, but why shoot yourself in the foot when you're trying to put your best foot forward?

Because the best food forward of a creep is still a creep.

>a creep is still a creep.

Yeah, some people are only up to no good :\

If you can't differentiate yourself from that, it would be something to work on well before you try and be as socially acceptable as the average joe.

For everyone else who's not a creep, maybe you just have to "accept" that everyone in the world just doesn't want to be socially acceptable anyway.

This reminds me of the bio-neural gel packs from Star Trek: Voyager. Wild to think that this could become a reality.

I might agree with you as a knee jerk, but I believe "the medium is the message"[1] and I don't think there's anything particularly meaningful or evocative about shattered glass as opposed to any other planar medium.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

There is no meaning in converting a conventionally destructive, random, chaotic act into a directed, aesthetic, meaningful one?

The fact he has a portrait of Kamala Harris called “glass ceiling breaker” and one of the victims of the Beirut explosion called #weareunbreakable suggests that you don’t need to dig particularly deep to find meaningful subtext in the choice of material and technique.

If anything it’s maybe a bit on-the-nose.

> If anything it’s maybe a bit on-the-nose.

This is what I was driving at. I should have been more specific to say not particularly meaningful or evocative to me. From the previews I've seen it's all based around shattering and breaking. Where I will give credit, there's one: "Transformation" where natural light is reflected at the shattered glass to portray a face which I find to be fascinating. The rest feel kitschy, it's not quite to my tastes.

Interesting technique, but indeed, painfully kitsch subjects.

> but I believe "the medium is the message"

> I don't think there's anything particularly meaningful or evocative about shattered glass as opposed to any other planar medium

These seem contradictory? If the medium is "uninteresting", then how it can be the focus of interest?

> "What if our AI bullishness continues to be right...and what if that’s actually bearish" - what if pee pee was poo poo

Despite the vulgarity, it is exceptionally illuminating to how much some of these slop pieces are just a mere pretension of rhetoric. I see this pretty consistently with a lot of the material I come across on the job that's gone through the LLM meat-grinder.

Also, the comment made me giggle like a little kid.

What's pretend-rhetoric about it? They're positing agents will prove to be very capable, but that this would ultimately be a bad thing by automating away too much of the economy. You can argue whether that's plausible or not, but it isn't an incoherent or vapid argument.

I suggest you read the annotation if that question isn't just rhetorical. I'm not familiar with Ed, but he has a pretty good take down in here if you can get past his somewhat juvenile writing style.

It is a problem when your doomsday timeline for obsolescence is behind the minute you publish. The memo itself was fantasy doomer porn on day 1.

If you're okay with the work being done poorly and without review, then sure. Otherwise, it'll take the same amount of time and be done worse. I would not trust solely 1 person to review 5 people's work let alone 100.

Then it’s not the work of 100 people, is it?

You’re arguing semantics. OP is hypothesising a future where the quality of work is comparable to that of a human. If you don’t believe that that’s on the cards, just say it, but you’re intentionally misrepresenting the hypothetical.

That's the point? Even though they are complex, the improved roads all use circular arcs which guarantee a baseline of good drivability.

It's my belief that the author has almost entirely used an LLM to put this together. Tailor engagement accordingly.

It's definitely odd that someone who allegedly wrote a complete compiler in Python would describe something that is obviously Rust syntax as Python-like.

I totally agree. "Python-like" was a bad choice of words on my part. I meant it more in terms of learning curve and explicitness, not the surface syntax. Structurally its more like C/Rust and I should have said that from the start

Could you tell us, did you, or did you not, use "AI" in creating this project?

Yes, I used AI during development. I treated it as an assistant for explanations, brainstorming, and occasional small code snippets. The language design, compiler architecture, semantics, and the majority of the implementation were written and decided by me

I doubt an LLM would have written this:

       # Parameter in Stack-Slots laden (für MVP: nur Register-Args)
        # Semantic Analyzer markiert Params mit is_param=True
        # Wir müssen jetzt die first 6 Args aus Registern laden
        # TODO: Implementiere Parameter-Handling
        # for now: Params bleiben in Registern (keine lokalen Vars mit gleichem Namen)

Also I love that I can understand all of this comment without actually understanding German.

How do you know this? It looks more like some kid’s homework

I suspect that was in the initial prompt that was used to generate this and the LLM decided Rust syntax was preferable.

Yes, it looks almost exactly like Rust. Expectations violation! :)