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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 23, 2026, 3:11 PM

    Our toolchains are unidirectional, and the result of that has been that our entire global exercise in large stochastic models is running _exactly backwards_.

    Write code. Compile, get errors. Manually go back to edit text. Fix, compile again. Loop N times. Compile successfully, run tests. See failure. Go back to text. Edit text. Loop N times.

    The Rust folks are so close. "Did you mean...." Yes, I did, just... edit the text and retry! "Warning, Implicit cast to" Great, make it explicit!

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Replies

  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 23, 2026, 3:19 PM

    Every step in the development process in which information is gained should be able to drive changes back into the text of the program _through the automation_.

    "Unknown variable, did you mean?" Yes, sure, click. But bring the compiler into the game. "This function will be inlined by the compiler. Inline the text for legibility?" Yes, please.

    But stochastic models? "This code resembles [library]". This code has few side effects, and might be made fully functional [list of side effects]."

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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 23, 2026, 3:21 PM

    We could have assistive technology for sharpening, simplifying and clarifying our thinking. Not just generating a tsunami of things we have to think but wish we didn't, instead. We could have that.

    Every line of boilerplate in this world is a tiny monument to laziness and negligence.

    Every line of slop code in this world is a tombstone for someone's cognitive ambitions.

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  • Greg Wilsongvwilson@mastodon.social
    Oct 23, 2026, 3:31 PM

    @mhoye with respect, I think that in many cases what's being monumented is "nobody was willing to give someone knowledgeable the support they needed to focus on this". I think of it the same way I think about security bugs: sometimes it's carelessness or ignorance, but sometimes it's "I'm really tired of doing this for free *and* being yelled at".

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  • The Janx Deviljanxdevil@sfba.social
    Oct 23, 2026, 3:48 PM

    @gvwilson @mhoye This feels right to me.

    My primary interface to code in my day job is mediated entirely by a shoggoth. The hundreds of thousands of lines of code I work to sustain was mostly written manually five to ten years ago by startup rats who never had time to focus on any time horizon longer than a few weeks. These days, the time horizons are just as short and the codebase now is simply unmaintainable without the assistance of shoggoths.

    However, in my hobby projects, which will never be published anywhere, and I can focus without any time horizon pressing on me, I am finding the shoggoths to be a real help with toilsome behind the scenes tasks.

    There is a real missed opportunity here due to the usual misrule that can be attributed to management school brain rot and the moral decay of American-style late-stage capitalism.

    Tend your gardens, and persevere as if these are the early days of a better world.

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  • Rich Puchalsky ⩜⃝richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
    Oct 23, 2026, 3:42 PM

    @mhoye

    I prefer to believe that our code writing processes are a microcosm of societal thought at large. Are our societies caught up in Freudian death drive, such that unconsciously most people want their own death and the death of others? Yes. That's clear from our environmental policies so why shouldn't it be clear that our code is designed towards death as well?

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