One of the lessons I learned from going back to school for CS was to be suspicious of code that worked as intended the first time.

Writing unit tests before or concurrently was critical to discovering ways the code might fail and in the process understand how the program was operating.

The meta goal became to automatically distrust things that worked without anyone knowing why.

Why?

Because if you don’t know why it worked before you have no idea if it will continue working.

All of the above was, “Everyone knows” status.

And then LLMs came along and everyone seemed to say, “Actually, forget all that and throw your integrity away.”

The transformation was invasive and pernicious.

@CptSuperlative I recently read this article on BYD. Great background, as I wasn’t aware of their history.

This is particular jumped out at me. While focused on a hardware issue, it applies to software as well:

“When defective cells appeared, Wang asked: “Have you found the root cause?” If yes: “Can you reproduce it?” Then the demand: “Make one hundred cells with exactly the same defect. If you can reproduce the failure one hundred times, identically, then and only then have you understood the mechanism.””

https://www.inc.com/howard-yu/the-nail-test-why-this-54-billion-innovation-is-terrifying-western-auto-executives/91317777

The Nail Test: Why This $54 Billion Innovation Is Terrifying Western Auto Executives

BYD says it's fixed yet another major problem with EVs.

Inc