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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I'm currently building a skyscraper on the foundations of a bikeshed.

Anyway, a nice idea for generative AI could be to take source code and turn it into a corresponding image of a building so managers can see what they're doing wrong.

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What color is the shed? Should we paint it before we tear it down?

I think it was in a book by Grady Booch that I read something like:

No one would ask an architect to add a third basement to an already complete skyscraper, but it happens in software all the time.

Reminds me of "If Architects had to work like Programmers".

https://archive.is/r4l6C

Given the generative AI aspect, the output would likely morph drain pipes into elevator shafts midway.

Eh. A better analogy - the output would decide that there needs to be conduit between floors for chilled water, hot water, sewage, dutifully make several 4” pipes, and then from floor to floor forget which is which.

"No, 'c_water' means 'clean_water', it has nothing to do with the temperature, so that's why you got burnt; also 'gray water' has nothing to do with a positional encoding scheme, and 'garbage collection' is just a service that goes around and picks up your discarded post-it notes - you didn't take that rotting fruit out of the bowl, so how could we be expected to know you were done with it?"

Even better actually.

It’s not great for the up-going elevator passengers encountering someone’s daily constituions.

Just like my code!

Are they willing to pay for a skyscraper at least? I find that a lot of people expect to pay for a shed and get a skyscraper that has no maintenance cost.

They 'get' or they 'expect to get'?

Expect to get. Thanks.

Have you tried this? I bet it would work right now and look exactly as expected, a mess. The again, I gave GPT-4o some obfuscated js, a canvas rendering some buildings (shared here originally), and asked what was being rendered and it returned that it was a heart. So maybe not.

> I'm currently building a skyscraper on the foundations of a bikeshed.

Not sure if you are joking or not, but I often hear similar things and I believe that it misses the point. What constitutes a good foundation in software is very subjective - and just saying "foundation bad" does not help a non-technical person understand _why_ it is bad.

It's better to point at that one small rock (some ancient perl-script that no-one longer understands) which holds up the entire thing. Which might be fine until someone needs to move that rock. Or something surrounding it.

xkcd: Dependency

https://xkcd.com/2347/

I like this thinking because it's a true reflection of how things work. I strongly doubt any housebuilder goes back to the architect and says "can't do that, foundations bad." They'd explain what the problem is: maybe the design is rated to a certain weight/height, or what's in the ground composition that prevents the requested changes.

We should do the same in software engineering. What exactly in our design (e.g. that Perl script that's running half the operation that we need to investigate) is stopping us?

That would be X-Rated...

Wait until they tell you it needs an Olympic swimming pool in the penthouse

On the cantilevered terrace of the penthouse. The residents of the penthouse aren't going to give up living space for a pool!

What? Are you working on my project???

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