AI vs. software companies

[patience_and_focus]

15 minutes ago, nsx5200 said:

This is the same problem that teams have when deciding to off-shore development: spend time to formalized requirements/prompts, or spend time to do the actual design/development, with the hidden "requirements" communicated via human interactions(meetings/chats/"culture"/philosophy).  With the off-shore teams, it's difficult to communicate culture and philosophy, so the end-product tend not to mesh as nicely.  AI is an extreme form of off-shoring, with even fewer channels for communicating "culture"/philosophy correctly.  I'm pretty sure this thread will explode if we start going down the rabbit holes of horror off-shore stories.

 

If vibe coding works as marketed, then product managers would be writing the requirements for AI to code, but it seems like the reality is that people w/ formal training in software engineering is still needed to write those requirements for AI coding right now.

Yes, that is a good analogy. However, despite what you correctly point out w.r.t churn during offshore software development, if offshoring was completely worthless then it would have been dead by now, but it is not dead. So there are probably some benefits, maybe not productivity but cost?

[nsx5200]

57 minutes ago, patience_and_focus said:

Yes, that is a good analogy. However, despite what you correctly point out w.r.t churn during offshore software development, if offshoring was completely worthless then it would have been dead by now, but it is not dead. So there are probably some benefits, maybe not productivity but cost?

It's a trade-off.  Quality/time/money, pick two(Project Management Triangle).  It seems like AI coding more or less still obeys that.

 

For throw-away codes/short-lived codes, AI/vibe coding is probably fine.  For longer living code, stability and proper design becomes more important.  Like any tools and problems, things work better when they're matched up properly.

[frommi]

10 hours ago, patience_and_focus said:

Do you feel like the reason for that has more to do with things like cross functional decision making, waiting on feedback (internal or external) to plan next steps that then bleed over to the next sprint, infra blockers (simple things like granting iam permissions but requires signoff), etc?

Sometimes. Getting distracted by details or try out things that are bound to fail also add to that list.

[beerbaron]

8 hours ago, frommi said:

Sometimes. Getting distracted by details or try out things that are bound to fail also add to that list.

Exactly, the cost of software execution went down. However, there is now additional need for upfront weeding out the ideas as those failed trys will go nowhere and put strain on other areas of organization. Example, sales do not have infinite bandwidth to sell new stuff. If new features are not sold and implemented without customer knowing... Why are you doing it.

 

Lots of waste because people want to skip the very essential task of thinking and debating the why and the how.

 

My recommendation to clients i meet that want to start with ai is usually. Identify an operation that is Major pain point within your business and implement POC WITH MEASURES of success before implementation.