In my new article, I explore Spec-Driven Development (SDD) through the lens of someone who lived through modelling days past. I acknowledge that “this time it might be different”...🧵
For the record, I do not think the end of human existence is likely, but I fully acknowledge there are ways in which the rise of self-sovereign AI could go very, very poorly for human beings.
Evan Prodromou has the unenviable task of making the whole ecosystem easy to understand. Thankfully he does that well. Things are logically laid out, there are comprehensive descriptions of even the most obscure parts of the spec, and it builds up nicely from the fundamentals.
if you look at the nuclear industry outside of Valor, it's mostly a modeling and simulation uh industry. Like when you think of a nuclear company, right, there's like nuclear companies out there that everyone knows the name of. And you kind of look under the cover. It's actually a modeling and simulation company, right? They produce um very very precise what we call paper reactors which have really good predictions of how a theoretical thing might behave.
Like that just does not seem like the ideal artifact. We should be able to store them somewhere. We should be able to have architecture diagrams that we can review and discuss that generate that code to spec.
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert L. Glass. In essence, this is a book about an industry that refuses to learn. That was true 25 years ago when this book was published, and it's probably twice as true today. (Just think about all the AI adoption metrics being rolled out — back to productivity mistaken for lines of code produced, only more elaborate. And expensive). What I like about this book is that Glass doesn't present anything new. Quite the opposite, actually. Rather, it's about research lessons that we all should know, but tend to forget. Ever had to do an estimate, or plan according to a requirements spec? Or maybe you thought that enough eyeballs make all bugs shallow? Then this book is for you. A great work by a fantastic author.
Turns out, the task of driving is not that dissimilar from the task of modeling language uh because of the social aspects of driving. You're kind of having a conversation with other dynamic actors in the world, but you're doing that in the space kind of body language of your agent, your car, as opposed to just the language of words.
We have got to acknowledge that most of the advanc advances in AI came out of algorithm advances not just the raw hardware. Now if most advances came from algorithms and computer science and programming tell me that their army of AI researchers is not their fundamental advantage.
I am a relic of the 80s as much as Raiders of the Lost Ark, and while I acknowledge how storytelling has changed between now and then, as a storytelling vehicle, in many ways it is still peerless and endlessly watchable.
Quality is not luxury. Quality is not expensive. Quality is not that you love it. Quality is just one thing. It meets spec. So, if I look under an electron microscope at any part of a Lexus, which is by any measure the highest quality car there is, uh under an electron microscope, it's filled with defects. But they're not defects that matter because they're defects that are within spec.
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