Contrary to code generation, all the other examples have one common point which is the main advantage, which is the alignment between your objective and their actions. With a good enough incentive, they may as well be deterministic.
When you order home delivery, you don’t care about by who and how. Only the end result matters. And we’ve ensured that reliability is good enough that failures are accidents, not common occurrence.
Code generation is not reliable enough to have the same quasi deterministic label.
"Generic Software Design" as the author called it, is nice for setting the general direction of some implementation. This is why I like to read software engineering books. It's easier to solve a problem if you have some kind of framing to guide you. And it's easier to talk about the solution if everyone share the same terminology.
But yes, the map is not the territory, and giving directions is not the same as walking the trail. The actual implementation can deviate from the plan drafted at the beginning of the project. A good explanation is found in Naur's Theory of Programming, where he says the true knowledge of the system is inside the head of the engineers that worked on it. And that knowledge is not easily transferrable.
I’m used to both vim and emacs. While I appreciate some IDE power features (debugging, code generation, tools integration,…), ultimately editing is very much a chore with them. You could add emacs or vim keybindings, but then you start to miss some of their features.
But whatever the editor/IDE, There’s always some neat tricks that will help you, especially around editing and tools integration.
I just visit an article on Microsoft's devblog and the page was blank with JS disabled. I can't think on how JS rendering is more performant than server rendering and caching. We view the article more times than it being edited.
Rebasing is basically working at the meta layer, when you are editing patches instead of the code that is being versionned. And due to that, it requires good understanding of the VCS.
Too often, merges is only understood as bring the changes from there to here, it may be useful especially if you have release candidates branches and hotfixes. And you want to keep a trave of that process. But I much prefer rebasing and/or squashing PR onto the main branch.
the flow that doesn't require you to open a different tab or cancel a command to `man` your way through dozens of poorly searchable pages of documentation, but allows you to continue translating what you want in your mind into the interface command with delay potentially subsecond interrupts
Is there kind of rewards for speed running typing ffmpeg flags? Like an advent of ffmpeg?
I know what I want to do, I don't know how it's being done, but there's a wealth of information that is very accessible. So I just read it.
It's very easy to type `apropos ffmpeg`. And even if you typed `man ffmpeg`, if you go to the end, you will find related manuals name for more information. And you can always use the pager (`less` in most case) facility for quick search.
I believe that a lot of frustration comes from people unwilling to learn the conceptual basis of the tools they are using.
What's the reward for trivializing real issues and coming up with broken "solutions"?
> It's very easy to type `apropos ffmpeg`
No it's not. First, that's not a Windows command, so right off the bat you've cut off the largest OS.
Second, your command is naively empty and it's telling that you've given it instead of an actual search query because you wouldn't be able to come up with a great one right away that would result in the correct result at the top - while the correct resuls is "hardcoded" in the field type in the UI.
So yeah, go on, find that perfect query and then explain why you think every single user should be able to do the same quickly. Then you can think about how justified your other beliefs are about basic workflow issues you don't understand
> What's the reward for trivializing real issues and coming up with broken "solutions"
Then any solutions is broken in this way. Even my bluetooth speaker comes with a manual. Not reading it and saying the speaker is broken, because you can't figure how to connect is pure delusion. Same as not reading ffmpeg manual and expecting to know how to use it.
> First, that's not a Windows command, so right off the bat you've cut off the largest OS.
ffmpeg on Window is so far the beaten path that it may as well be in Mordor. I would gladly bet that someone that knows how to run ffmpeg on windows also knows how to find the documentation for it.
> So yeah, go on, find that perfect query
Why would I find the perfect query? Do you go in the library and then find the correct line of the correct book in one go? Or do you consult the list of books of books for a theme, select a few candidates, consult their index, and then read the pages?
Then all of that is left to do is to note down the reference if you need to consult the book again (no need to remember everything).
Nope, you're just doing the same thing - purposefully ignoring the issue to make your non-solution comparable...
> Even my bluetooth speaker comes with a manual.
... in this case - the length and scope of the manual. First, you can operate the speaker without the manual or with just a single read of the manual- so spend a few seconds to learn how to pair (but you might not even need that as "hold to pair" might be something you remember from other devices), then the power/volume buttons require no manual because you've operated such buttons your whole life.
> Same as not reading ffmpeg manual
Of course it's not the same, the ffmpeg manual isn't a tiny page of 5 items, and no other apps will help you learn the peculiarities of ffmpeg. Also, the whole point of intuitive UI with "typed info" is that you don't need to read that huge manual to do the basics as you can simply follow the structure laid out by someone more knowledgeable
> ffmpeg on Window is so far the beaten path that it may as well be in Mordor. I would gladly bet that someone that knows how to run ffmpeg on windows also knows how to find the documentation for it.
Who would take that irrelevant bet? The issue isn't in finding! the manual!
> Why would I find the perfect query?
To prove that your solution works. I know it doesn't and challenge you to prove otherwise. Your suggestion is worse than asking users to Google, because at least there users will likely get the correct top result in a few tries for common needs
> Do you go in the library and then find the correct line of the correct book in one go?
No, I open an app and pick the correct format from the drop-down menu correctly in one go
> Or do you consult the list of books of books for a theme, select a few candidates, consult their index, and then read the pages?
Oh man, even in your fantasies you can't come up with a good workflow! No wonder you're fine suggesting everyone wastes a lot of time aproposing empty queries
If you take the set of possible ffmpeg invocations, it's very huge. Yes, it's possible to create some kind of wrapper that serve some common cases. And there are many of such wrappers or alternative tools like Xld (macOS) or Handbrake. But when you do need to use ffmpeg, that means that such wrapper is unfit for some reason or another. And in that case, it's not that much of an effort to read the manual which is very comprehensive.
It's the same with video viewers or music players. Often the default app of the OS is enough and they are very intuitive. But sometimes you need a bit more control and that's when using something like vlc or mpv which their extensive filter capabilities (which requires to have the doc at hand) is mandatory.
ffmpeg interface is ok for what it does. Any of your suggestion would be complex to implement if it aims to support the whole feature set of ffmpeg.
But you only need to find the correct tool once and mark it in some way. Aka write a wrapper script, jot down some notes. You are acting like you’re forced to use the cli each time.
One can do that with LLM as well. Honestly, I almost always just save the command if I think I am going to use it later. Also, I can just look back at the chat history.
When you order home delivery, you don’t care about by who and how. Only the end result matters. And we’ve ensured that reliability is good enough that failures are accidents, not common occurrence.
Code generation is not reliable enough to have the same quasi deterministic label.
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