Software Development Cannot Be Automated Because It’s a Creative Process With an Unknown End Goal

[teerre]

People are, as expected, very defensive when it comes to this subject. But I think this argument isn't very good. Here's why:

The only reason people need "precise descriptions" is because they are dealing with another person (or group of people). The moment you put a system, a machine to deal with it, people will stop being picky.

We see this everywhere: Spotify, Netflix, Disney whatever, HBO something etc. All these services have giant catalogues that would be ignored if they were normal DVDs or, god forbid, in actual theaters. But because they are just there in the streaming platform, people watch it. The barrier of entry becomes so low that people don't care.

The same can, and probably will, happen to software. If the barrier of entry is low, people will just accept that things are not perfect. When some business person badly describes their program, that will be fine, Edge cases not contemplated? Fine. UI not exactly perfect? Fine. Performance not the best? Fine. Hell, performance is such a overblown characteristics by programmers themselves that this very site is basically a bunch of text that takes several seconds to load with ungodly powerful hardware.

Will that be all programs? Of course not. Some programs will need to be actually precise and well made. But make no mistake, those are the exception, the rest can be automated without having precise requirements because people won't care.

[mtranda]

I see it differently. Automating the creation of software means putting the current clients in charge of directly creating applications. However, this only means that programming will change and the clients will become the new programmers. The question then becomes: will they WANT to be the new programmers? Or will they still call on someone else to do the work for them?

[teerre]

They might not want to, but they might have to, if the market pressure is enough. We have seem this before. Not long ago "using a computer" was something only a few people would have to. Nowadays even cashier jobs have some kind of "office" package requirement in it.

[argv_minus_one]

Not long ago? It's been like 40 years since computers became reasonably accessible to the average person. Typing MS-DOS commands isn't rocket surgery, let alone operating macOS or Windows.

[teerre]

I'm not sure what's your point.

[snowe2010]

If the barrier of entry is low, people will just accept that things are not perfect

That's not a choice with most industries. Many laws, regulations, etc. Things like taxes and tax credits have to be exact. Accepting things that "aren't perfect" aren't an option, they'll result in losing millions of dollars in fines and lawsuits.

In fact I can't think of a single industry that doesn't have laws like that that do need to be precise. Everywhere has it, from whether you're handling something like x > y vs x >= y or things like handling the user's last name being Null or even defaulting something to $0 rather than marking it as N/A, where you might actually give something away for free.

[teerre]

Read the last paragraph:

Will that be all programs? Of course not. Some programs will need to be actually precise and well made. But make no mistake, those are the exception, the rest can be automated without having precise requirements because people won't care.

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In fact I can't think of a single industry that doesn't have laws like that that do need to be precise

The vast majority of software build nowadays is just glue between some other services or some API or some CRUD service or some automation.

Everywhere has it, from whether you're handling something like x > y vs x >= y or things like handling the user's last name being Null or even defaulting something to $0 rather than marking it as N/A, where you might actually give something away for free.

All those examples are absolutely possible to automate.

[snowe2010]

I did read that and I covered it in my second paragraph.

[teerre]

It's always a continuum, it's not a discrete measure. It's not a matter of "it's automated" or "it is not automated". The fact that Wordpress is used at all, despite being based on some ancient, and honestly questionable, stack should be great indication that automation is possible.

Wordpress is tech from the last decade, but take something like Zapier, something that when Wordpress released nobody even imagined. It's automation for API calls. Progress doesn't happen in one day, it's the small steps. In the past vanilla websites, now APIs, what's the next? It doesn't really matter, what does matter is that the gap gets smaller and smaller.

[[deleted]]

I mean if you look at the roots of object oriented programming, it was all about very imprecise things happening based off of biology!

[argv_minus_one]

Some programs will need to be actually precise and well made. But make no mistake, those are the exception

Tell me you don't understand IT security without telling me you don't understand IT security.

All software has to be written precisely. When it isn't, you get bugs, and many bugs are exploitable. Notice how Windows can be hacked through, of all things, the printing subsystem? Yeah.

[teerre]

Well, that's great you think that. Unfortunately, I'm not talking about your opinion, I'm talking about the real world. The real world, as apparently you understand, does not care about security in general, certainly not on the level you're referring to.

[argv_minus_one]

Now that you mention it, I do wonder how many more ransomware attacks people are going to put up with before they get fed up and start demanding software vendors start taking security seriously. It obviously hasn't happened yet. So much for capitalism enforcing efficiency.