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devin • yesterday at 6:36 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

I chuckle a little bit at this specification thing. We used to do this. We used to write big binders of specifications, and then we'd set about implementing them. We stopped doing it because it didn't really work. We'd learn things in the process of building which negated the value of the big specs we wrote. That's why we stopped doing it. This is where continuous improvement, CI/CD, tighter release cycles, etc. were all born.


Replies

nightski • yesterday at 8:26 PM

But why? On reason is that implementation was a bottleneck. That made it expensive to change a system once it was entirely implemented. It was better to get the feedback sooner so you didn't waste time implementing the wrong thing.

The calculus on a lot of these old adages is changing.

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Kinrany • yesterday at 10:48 PM

The problem with that was lack of iteration, not presence of specifications.

jbs789 • yesterday at 6:57 PM

It is funny. At some point the code is the specification.

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Foobar8568 • yesterday at 9:47 PM

Yet software quality has been in deep dive for a while, long before AI.

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