Hacker News Reader

Comment by tudorgirba | Hacker News Reader

Nice question.

We were certainly aware of Intentional Programming. And indeed, Glamorous Toolkit does have a language workbench underneath with which we can create editing experiences for various technologies.

But we started from the "reading" part of software engineering not from the "writing". That's because "reading" the system occupies the largest amount of development effort and it's the least optimized activity. Through contextual tools we can improve it manyfold. And this, it turns out, leads to a new way of "writing" as well. We call it Moldable Development.

View on HN

If you provide too many ways to do the same thing, people get confused. Like... I don't need a button or drag-n-drop to turn a function into a class function, I can just move the code or add the modifier in a normal text editor. Now, AI can do it for me with underspecified natural language, no need for an overly complex UI that takes so much effort to learn.

I suspect this paradigm would be better served by nuking the implementation and reframing this around AI with tool usage. That seems where development is going

Thanks for the suggestion. I would be curious to learn more about what you mean about "AI with tool usage".

In any case, we wrote a bit about what we think of the intersection between Moldable Development and GenAI as explanations here: https://medium.com/feenk/rewilding-software-engineering-a360...

If you aren't paying attention to how AI is impacting software development, you are missing the biggest paradigm shift and a direct competitor to GT. It's much more than GenAI and chat

AI can use tools, including everything GT can use. MCP is an emerging "standard" for how to make tools available to AI

I am not sure why you are saying that I am not paying attention to how AI is impacting software development. I just pointed you to a chapter that shows that it's not a competitor at all. Moldable Development and GenAI are complementary :)

In GT, we have integration with LLMs as well, including programatic ways to create interfaces for it.

MCP is certainly interesting.

GT and AI are direct competitors because both want to be the primary interface people use to develop through / with

AI is also moldable development

If you had to ask what AI tool usage is, then you have missed significant aspects of the shift

No, AI is not Moldable Development. AI can help Moldable Development (mostly as an optimization).

Moldable Development is first and foremost about the interface. AI is an engine. The interface is the thing you interact through. Like the chat. Or the editor with chat abilities. That little layer is worth paying attention to. Because it will define how you think about your interactions with AI.

Rather rigid thinking in your response(s), but I'm not surprised after this thread. I'd invite you to think more flexibly about what the interface to moldable development can be (note the lowercasing). AI is generally becoming the primary interface for all things, chat is just one medium, but definitely not the only one. It can/will be able to do all the same things that one could do in GT, plus a whole lot more.

I am glad that AI provides what you are looking for.

I'd still be interested if you have a specific point you disagree with in relation to what I wrote above and in particular, what we wrote in our little book (the link is above) specifically about the topic of this conversation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com