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.