People misinterpret this and think they can incrementally build a skyscraper out of a shed.

sph 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's exactly why software is so bad. No one ever knows their shed would ultimately have to become a skyscraper, and management doesn't allocate any budget to lay stronger foundations when expectations change; you make do with what you have.

See also: "there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution"

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saulpw 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's what happened though? First humans built sheds, then we built 2-story buildings, then taller and taller, until we built skyscrapers. Obviously it wasn't a single structure, but we did have to evolve our thinking on how to build things, we didn't just start building a skyscraper before we built a shed.

	▲	bluGill 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You can't do that. A small bike shed is often just put some concrete blocks on the ground, and then build on top of them with wood. A correct house needs a stronger foundation at higher costs (sheds larger than bike shed are build the same way), but is still made of wood. A skyscraper is built with a very different foundation, and needs a steel frame that would not be affordable in a house. In between the two there are also building made of brick which allows building taller than wood. (and there are lots of other options with different costs - engineered wood is different) Point is though eventually some system runs out of ability. It works different in programming from physical construction, but the concept is the same, eventually you can't make a bad early design work anymore.
	▲	GuinansEyebrows 15 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		to put it in another way than the other replies: you will have 100x more pushback to an arguably-necessary ground-up rewrite instead of "just add this new feature to the existing codebase", even when you (as an engineer) know full well why "just adding a feature" is probably a bad idea.
	▲	speed_spread 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But you didn't upgrade the shed into a skyscraper. The iterative process you describe involves a human respecifying from scratch using the knowledge developed building the previous instance and seeing it's limitations first hand. That part can't be automated, no LLM is going to challenge your design assumptions by itself. Hence people pushing agent-built projects way past what their inherent architecture should support, delivering an unmaintainable code spaghetti.

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narag 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can't physically but the logic is the same: you need beams, foundations, walls and roofs, with strenghts adjusted for scale. Software mindset :-)

In this sense, web applications haven't changed so much in the last twenty years: client, server, database...

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cpursley 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s actually the opposite - you actually can. The feel I'm getting reading anti-AI sentiment is people are expect one shot results out of limited context.

	▲	WJW 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm pretty sure that you can't gradually upgrade a shed into a skyscraper unless you pour a skyscraper-ready foundation before even starting on the shed. But if you're doing that, why start with a shed and not with a skyscraper? Not sure why you're trying to bring AI development into this.