#software engineering

7 articles

Because It's Not Fun Enough

Andrew Oram asked why programming languages rise and fall, and quoted the answer without noticing. Programming is a vocation, an art, and a job. Make any of those harder than they need to be, and your language survives exactly as long as it can't be replaced.

User Submission: AI is a Bad Tool

Reader Hideki Idoru argues that AI is a decent information distiller and a bad tool for nearly everything else in software, because no one can cheaply verify that generated code is correct. The deeper claim is that most programming was already trivial, unabstracted busywork, and AI has only torn the mask off. It's worth reading and thinking about.

What's Old is Old Again

A Reddit user on r/SaaS is looking forward to the consulting rates he'll command once the wave of projects trying to dig out from under AI slop hits. He's not wrong, but he's dated the pattern to 2010 offshoring when it's older than that, and the lesson never sticks: coding was never typing.

The Tacit Dimension

Christian Ekrem's 'The Tacit Dimension' carries Polanyi's 'we can know more than we can tell' into software engineering. He's right that experience works that way. Knowledge doesn't, and the essay never separates the two.