Sue SmithFeb 1

"The specification language gets more precise over time, because natural language is ambiguous and different models interpret the same prompt differently. You add more structure. You define exact function signatures. You specify return types. You nail down error handling behavior with enough precision that two different models should produce interchangeable output. The specification starts looking less like English prose and more like a programming language."

https://nesbitt.io/2026/01/30/will-ai-make-package-managers-redundant.html

Will AI Make Package Managers Redundant?

Following the prompt registry idea to its logical conclusion.

Andrew Nesbitt
Show threadSue SmithFeb 1
This is obviously a thought experiment but I can genuinely see a lot of these spec driven projects going this way, at some point you're trying to do something that would have been easier just using an existing high level programming language.
Show threadSue SmithFeb 1
Which might be an indictment of how badly we've taught these programming languages tbh lol.
Show threadSue SmithFeb 1
Honestly I think there is a lot to this, when I see some of the guides to using LLMs for folk without coding skills I think I could more easily just teach them to code. The mystification of coding is also a huge part of the appeal of this stuff for lots of people.
Show threadThomas Depierre

@sue partially this is due to our tools being atrocious at being learnable.

Like, I am sorry, but how the heck did we need decades to come up with the idea of a multiline error message... Or simply, searching for people not understanding error message and then trying to fix it. And yet, it took Rust to make it something we *start* to do at large. (It existed in niches, but I mean that even GCC got *one* multiline error message now).

We simply have not considered the UX of our tools before. Partially due to lack of funding but also because well... Toxic masculinist culture of software I think

Feb 1 at 12:36pmWeb
Show threadSue SmithFeb 1
@Di4na Absolutely, there has been a ton of intentional gatekeeping at work, and now it's colliding with these tools promising to make those problems go away.
Show threadThomas DepierreFeb 1

@sue yeah and they are... "smooth" about it. I keep pointing out that the main reason LLM suddenly work is that we stopped trying to train them to meet a banchmark or abstract construct goal. They all started training them only to be... "appreciated" and make the humans feel good.

They basically are the only tool in our suite that make you feel like you matter and are respected. Emphasize on "feel"

Show threadJeremyFeb 2
@sue @Di4na
I still recall going into my 1st code review after being transferred to a new group (at least I didn't get laid off 🙄) many, many years ago. The PRs were bug fixes and 90% of time spent was to reverse engineer the code to figure out what it was supposed to do. I got chided for "too many comments" that were also "too verbose". But no, delete those before we allow merge. Make the next sucker suffer like you did.