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Comment by jplusequalt | Hacker News Reader

I believe this type of person exists.

My team lead has worked on the same software for 30 years. He has the ability to hear me discuss a bug I noticed, and then pinpoint not only the likely culprit, but the exact function that's causing it.

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I do the same thing in a project I’ve worked on for 25 years. I’ve had mediocre at best results with AI. It’s useful to discuss concepts with, but the code never handles the nuances of the edge cases.

Then they quit or die.

Yep this is like comparing master craftsmanship with a production line. You're gonna get good attention to detail and a masterpiece from one, and a limited thing that will break after few years from the other. But for majority of use cases the second one is enough. And pointing out the master craftsmanship is "better" is besides the point.

And with one you need to train a guy for 25 years and with the other you need plan mode for a few minutes and then it runs 24/7.

Our society needs more experts, not less.

Do we? We have many buildings built and very little master masons or whatever nowadays. The amount of craftsmen needed to build a 10 story building is very limited. That's what we should aim for software, much less experts needed for the same outcome so more people can benefit from software.

there is a large incentive for computer programmers to build themselves up in importance. higher wages, better love lives, more status. but most software is pretty mundane and straight forward, or at least should be. fancy architectures rarely pay off and the best solutions are sometimes the most obvious. although i could be suffering from that phenomenon that people in maths have where they struggle to understand then once they grasp it they feel dumb like "ofc i should have known that!"

It’s the old developers who have been doing it the longest who pick the simple and obvious solution.

Ok but you do want the people building your home to be experts at building homes, yes?

No house I ever lived in was ever made by experts. The apartment building I grew up in was all built by minimum wage guys that may or not even speak the language of the building overseer and had zero specific training or certifications. Some architect somewhere did the plans for a standard building, which the developer purchased and just used.

Then the only "experts" (not even close, just a guy with a form and some technical training) are the building inspectors who come at the end to verify if some stuff is done up to code.

Other than the original architect who draw the plans that got used for many buildings and the electrical engineer that cleared the electrical, no experts were involved. This is basically how the whole city and most of the country was built.

There's no expert mason or painter or whatever involved. Just a dude that can hold a paint roller. That's the same as going from a craftsman programmer to some dude with claude. Individual quality goes down, but more importantly price goes down way more and so many more people get access to much better quality than having nothing.

I want the people building the buildings I live, work and shop in to know what they’re doing so those buildings don’t fall down or let in the wind and rain or require too much maintenance.

And the equivalent for software. It’s usable, intuitive, responsive, stats up and running, and doesn’t leak my private data.

What is your argument? Should we stop training people on how to do something because we're mortals?

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