I see where you're coming at. But don't underestimate the amount of design work that goes into making a good chair. It probably took more time than your think, which transforms them into the person who can craft the chair
Yes, but that is part of the point: a chair being built is mostly distinct from a chair being designed (there is of course a small amount of design that is done while building). Software is designed at a much higher percentage while being created (or if you prefer, there is a cycle between the two states).
You also don’t often learn why you don’t need a chair while building one.
> or if you prefer, there is a cycle between the two states
Yes, what I mostly emphasize with this mode of thinking is that the act of building software is primarily there to transform people (you try a thing, it doesn't work like you think it would, that inspires you to try another thing) and the software at the end of it is largely a byproduct.
If you have the right people-state, producing the software is trivial, it's how do you port the right knowledge into their brains in the first place and and software should be just another tool in your toolbox towards that aim.
Chair makers do not make one chair - they make one for the whole family. Then they make more in a very similar style for the next family. There is very little new design in a chair - it has all been done.
We don’t order bespoke-design chairs because construction is expensive, so we adapt to available chairs. In a world without construction-related scarcities and mostly design expenses (think sci-fi with that so far unachievable ability to manipulate the reality on molecular level), a chair can be feasibly created for specific personalities of yourself and others in given circumances, possible context in which you might use it, the interior it would fit in, etc.
In software, this kind of construction scarcity does not exist. Once you design a chair, you can instantiate it to your heart’s content.
For me what supports this are things outside of software. If a company or regime wants to build something, they can't just say what they want and get exactly what they envision. If human minds can't figure out what other human wants, how could a computer do it?
I do agree that the scale has expanded a lot. But this is true with any other fields. Does that mean that you need to learn everything? Well at some point it becomes unfeasible.
See doctors for example, you learn a bit of everything. But then if you want to specialise, you choose one.
You're overpaying by a factor of 4, easily. I use `ccusage`'s statusline in claude code, and even with my personal $20/mo subscription I don't think there's been a single month where I didn't touch ~$80 of usage. I wasn't even abusing it as bad as some people tend to.
You can use both btw. Get the $20 plan and turn on "extra usage" in billing. Then you can use the basic plan first and if it runs out, it uses token-based billing for the overflow.
For most of my AI uses, I already have an implementation in mind. The prompt is small enough that most of the time, the agent would get it 90% there. In a way, it's basically an advanced autocomplete.
I think this is quite nice cause it doesn't feel like code review. It's more of a: did it do it? Yes? Great. Somewhat? Good enough, i can work from there. And when it doesn't work, I just scrap that and re-prompt or implement it manually.
But I do agree with what you say. When someone uses AI without making the code their own, it's a nightmare. I've had to review some PRs where I feel like I'm prompting AI rather than an engineer. I did wonder if they simply put my reviews directly to some agent...
I saw this from another post and was going to try it out but lost the link. Thanks for posting here again! Will try it out next time when I have a group of people around
Modularity and separation of concerns can extend into other domains than software.
For me, it seems so much simpler to keep the two separate. You won't be forced to wash the heating element every time you wash the cup. Can't heat a different cup while the other is in the dishwasher, unless all your cups are self-heating. Normally, the only way for a cup to break is if it shatters, but with an inbuilt heater there's electronics that can break too. And should the cup shatter, now the heater is unusable too, or vice versa.
I have to have a kettle for other purpose (including heating water for other mugs than mine), and no self-heating mug is going to be as efficient as a kettle to heat water.
Furthermore, I also put cold or room temperature liquids in my mug. With a self-heating one, I would be carrying the heating parts for absolutely no reason.
Same goes for a TV.
By keeping things separated, I can decide what I do which each device and manage their lifecycle separately.
If the device reading video files is included in the TV, I can't plug it to another TV or a projector or even take it with me to use it elsewhere.
While I've upgraded three times my video playing device to follow tech evolution, I've kept the same TV to plug them in.
I have a multi-purpose kettle that I can use to boil water, heat the room, cook a small amount of food, or use as a sand battery for when its cold in the desert, where the kettle is designed to operate as long as there is a handful of material to burn.
It is fair to observe a separation methodology, but I also have to say, in some cases multi-purpose devices have their place.
If, say, the self-heating mug involved solar harvesting, I'd put a couple in my kettle bag, for sure.
You can make coffee with a kettle, but if you are making enough coffee often enough, it does make sense to bundle a second kettle into a dedicated coffeemaker, even if you are reducing the functionality of it by doing so.
It's a thing and it's convenient as a smart TV is convenient for people who don't care much.
But as a "power user" of a TV, I want to compose my own setup.
In the same way, "power users" of coffee don't use a coffeemaker. They use things like French press.
(I use instant coffee myself in my non-heating mug so in this comparison I would be the person not owning a TV and watching everything on their phone?)
Arguably the outcome you’d want there is to be able to add your own kettle to the coffee maker, so you can have the best value/option for you if you want it. Want a cheap thing or none? Fine. Want one with remote start and modded temp controls or whatever? Fill your boots. Got a new coffee part but like the existing kettle? Reuse it.
This applies less for some physical items, I know some people are already preparing to explain why it’d be harder to make or dangerous or something but that would miss the point. Computers are incredibly easy to swap out, we already have so many ways of doing that.
Maybe I want a fast computer. None. Maybe I want to upgrade later. Maybe in a year there’s a faster cheaper one. Maybe mine is just fine right now but I need a new screen. Why do I need to bundle the two things together? There’s a simplicity for users unboxing something but there’s not (I think) an enormous blocker to having something interchangeable here.
This provides absolutely zero advantages to the oven or to the microwave. It does cause a lot of stupid, easily foreseeable problems:
- There's only one control panel, and if the oven is currently active, some of the microwave controls get disabled.
- The microwave is awful in various ways -- regardless of whether the oven is active -- which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem, because microwaves are very cheap. But...
- It's impossible to replace the microwave, a $50 device, without simultaneously replacing the oven, a $2000 device.
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