Steve Troughton-SmithFeb 24

RE: https://mastodon.social/@kocienda/116126204434018823

I think having a master reference copy of my apps, built mostly by hand (in my case for iOS/Mac) is still important.

But the two Android apps I shipped last week, and two Windows apps I'm working on now, I effectively haven't written (or even reviewed) a line of code. If the reference (i.e. a detailed plan) is good enough, and if you test it well enough, that's kinda all you need.

Your source code really isn't precious, and if you're that much of a perfectionist you're probably not shipping

Show threadCallum JonesFeb 24

@stroughtonsmith (I haven't used and don't plan to use Codex or similar):

To me this argument reads like your software architecture is irrelevant to you, almost the "AI is the compiler" ideas I keep seeing.

If you aren't reading the code, how do you understand the maintainability of it, and what do you do when the inevitable bugs occur? I find debugging my own code much easier than someone else's, never mind something written by something with no perspective/logic/reasoning.

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 24
@seejy it maintains the code, it fixes the bugs? If it can write 1,000 lines of code in a few seconds based on a few-word prompt, why would I need to get in there myself except for the most critical of emergencies. It has your entire codebase and chat history as perspective, which is certainly more than I can keep in my head at any one time
Show threadMartinFeb 24
@stroughtonsmith @seejy I have high respect for your work, but the examples you build are such low-risk things, aren't they? A color palette app. An offline game.
What about authentication and managing user data? Or payments? Would you still say "why bother going in there" until the critical emergency occurred? Let's say it even gets 95% correct, what about the 5% where user data is leaked. The undefined edge cases where payments fail?
Sounds like a nightmare to me. 🦇
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithFeb 24

@mrtnlst @seejy that seems so obvious I didn't bother bringing it up — of course my stuff is low-risk, so is most software. If security is your utmost concern, don't use any of this stuff. If you're in any way security-conscious, you already know this. If you need a security expert, hire a security expert.

Most people don't, and most people already have software with plenty of security issues, written by hand, that they're oblivious to.

That's not an argument to avoid this stuff entirely, imo

Show threadMartin
@stroughtonsmith glad to hear that though! Thanks!
Feb 24 at 6:45pmWeb