You (are required to) treat your code as having to fulfill both functional requirements and declared non-functional requirements, including measures of maintainability, reliability, performance, and security and (regulatory/legal) compliance.
> maintaining enterprise software which is what most programmers are employed to do …
I hear little from those involved with enterprise or line-of-business applications discussing their findings. Forums like this are dominated by SAAS, tool makers, computer and data scientists, and infrastructure concerns.
Anyone using AI with large, complex business systems?
Totally agree. I see a lot of experimentation, initial exploration for an idea, etc. but the middle and end portions are never noteworthy except when it goes haywire and someone makes a blogpost about it.
Ideating is important but it is also very far from what is being promised. It’s also not that useful to the average person most of the time. If this is truly a revolutionary, must-have, daily-use technology, then by now we should have some idea of where it lives. But we don’t! The best and most consistent application so far is coding agents for coders. That’s great, but again, not the promise and very limited in scope.
I suggest that AI doesn’t currently deliver what is really required of good software for public use. That is understood by more experienced programmers, but not by those with less experience and management.
It should be Useful, Accurate, Consistent, Available and Usable.
Doesn’t AI just largely help quickly deliver Available and (to some degree) Usable?
> Next I'm going to set it loose on 263 GB database of every stock quote and options trade in the past 4 years. I bet it achieves successful trading strategies.
I bet it doesn't achieve a single successful (long term) trading strategy for FUTURE trades. Easy to derive a successful trading strategy on historical data, but so naive to think that such a strategy will continue to be successful in the long term into the future.
If you do, come back to me and I’ll will give you one million USD to use it - I kid you not. Only condition is your successful future trading strategy must solely be based on historical data.
Agentic Coding or perhaps Agentic Software Development is far more real and appropriate . Calling it engineering is better left to those wanting to impress family and peers.
There is an alternative to describing the (subjective) “process”. That is to describe a model of the sandwich - the parts and how they can collaborate. The issue is that how to do that is forgotten and unfashionable.
This perhaps reflects the general divide in viewpoints on “vibe-coding”. Do you let go of everything (including understanding) and let it rip, or require control and standards to some degree. Current coding agents seem to promote the former. The only way with their approach, is to provide them with constraints?
Modern human programming has devolved to nothing more than modeling problems and systems using lines of code, procedures, sub-routines and modules, utilizing a “hack it till it works”(tm) methodology.
> utilizing a “hack it till it works”(tm) methodology.
Your post describes my coding perfectly. I don't have CS training of any type, never been formally involved in software development (recently started dabbling in OSS) and never used an LLM/agent for help (do use a local SLM for autocomplete and suggestions only).
Yet I can "code." I suspect a (pre-2023ish) software developer would likely tell me "go learn to code" if i asked for review. I don't know the formal syntax people expect to see and it has organization more typical of raging dumpster fires. Doesn't mean it's not code.
You (are required to) treat your code as having to fulfill both functional requirements and declared non-functional requirements, including measures of maintainability, reliability, performance, and security and (regulatory/legal) compliance.
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