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A software conference that advocates for quality

https://bettersoftwareconference.com/
47•leoncaet•5h ago

Comments

WeirderScience•4h ago
Looking forward to Casey Muratori's talk!
prisenco•2h ago
When I saw the title of the conference I immediately thought of him so I'm not surprised he's headlining!
reactordev•4h ago
Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good. While it works, I’m often having to cleanup afterwards - slowing everything down. I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense.

Anyway, I’ll watch the twitch stream from across the pond.

lotyrin•4h ago
They probably just manage to realize that being seen to be "moving fast with AI" simply isn't a goal unto itself, that it has to deliver something of value beyond itself.
Terr_•4h ago
Or at least "value" beyond that reaped by current investors unloading their shares onto "Greater Fool" buyers at high prices.
prisenco•2h ago
We could be in a tortoise vs. hare situation... Unless we find ourselves back in the conditions of the 2010's again, thoughtfully building software to be high quality and high performance may win out in the long run over "move fast and break things."
lotyrin•1h ago
Always have been. It’s why the vast majority of disposable corporate garbageware, products chasing a buck, consumer shovelware, etc is built on the shoulders of thoughtfully designed, high quality, mature software that stands the test of time. No popular production software runs on an OS kernel someone vibe coded yesterday. Durable utility is where quality lies, as the cost of quality is able to amortize. Chasing trends is, by definition, costly.
ktallett•3h ago
There are plenty of alternative software needs that do not need to be AI based nor do they need to change tactics due to the current obsession with AI.
switchbak•3h ago
Well, a couple years ago this stuff all sucked (well, a lot more). Yeah it's in many cases somewhat borderline now, but still - this is frickin magic compared to what I thought was possible just a little while ago.

My question is how far does it go - are the gains going to peter out, or does it keep going or even accelerate? Seems like one of the latter two thus far.

xyzzy123•3h ago
Yeah it's interesting, unless I lean hard on them, AI coding agents will tend to solve problems with a lot of "hedging" by splitting into cases or duplicating code. It is totally fine with infinity special cases and unless you push for it, they will solve most problems with special cases and not generalise or consolidate (gemini, claude code at least both seem to have this behaviour).

I feel like this comes about because it's the optimal strategy for doing robust one-shot "point fixes", but it comes at the cost of long-term codebase heath.

I have noticed this bias towards lots of duplication eventually creates a kind of "ai code soup" that you can only really "fix" or keep working on with AI from that point out.

With the right guidance and hints you can get it to refactor and generalise - and it does it well - but the default style definitely trends to "slop" in my experience so far.

zahlman•2h ago
To be fair, a lot of humans also have this problem.
ants_everywhere•2h ago
> Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality because my agents aren’t that good

I would guess the same way humans do.

Put brain in creative mode, bang out something that works

Put brain in rules compliance mode and tidy everything up.

Then send for code review.

gerdesj•2h ago
"I was almost as fast when I had just basic intellisense"

Get a grip.

You know as well as I do that you are simply marking and correcting your agent's work. I hope it works for you but why not be more rigorous in the first place when you do stuff?

bradly•2h ago
In DJB's paper on software quality he identifies actionable strategies for code quality and code security that were born out of frustration to sendmail's exploit after exploit. Very accessible and fun read: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf

I would expect this conf to expand on those types of concepts and strategies.

Suppafly•1h ago
>Curious how they’ll balance the business needs of moving fast with AI vs quality

Why would they need to do that? Is that even a goal or something that this conference is addressing at all?

wavemode•4h ago
The programming language in the background of this website appears to be Odin.
jeberle•1h ago
Bill Hall "Ginger Bill", the creator Odin, is a speaker on day 1.
rkagerer•4h ago
Where can you actually learn the substance of what this conference is about?

All I found is a Twitch tagline that reads "Software is getting worse. We're here to make it better."

Suppafly•1h ago
The have a list of the presentations in the original link. That should at least give you some idea what they're going to talk about.
ravenstine•3h ago
If only they could get Jonathan Blow to be a speaker.
throwawaymaths•3h ago
the logo is an unsettling convolution of the back orifice logo
ravenstine•3h ago
Now that you mention it, I'll never see the symbol of the Galactic Empire the same way again.
xyst•2h ago
Seems like a waste of time to me, especially in this age of AI slop somehow passing as quality. Just another excuse to drink/network/party on company’s dime.

However, I would be interested in establishing a union for technologists across the nation. Drive quality from the bottom up, form local chapters, collectively bargain.

zx8080•1h ago
For a non-engineer (business) person the case "engineering quality vs move fast break things" sounds more like "slow & expensive VS fast". The choice is obvious.
no_wizard•1m ago
It’s not that at all though, the adage “slow down to speed up” applies, because high quality engineering will inevitably increase throughput in the long run.

Really that’s the core of it

kragen•1h ago
I may be the only one who thought this, but this doesn't seem to be related to the fondly remembered Better Software Magazine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Software_Magazine

It seems to be socially associated with the Handmade Hero and Jon Blow Jai crowd, which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame. They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness.

rtpg•1h ago
I really wish that Casey & co could be more excited to show off stuff than they are excited to say how wrong everyone else is.

Gimme an in without calling me an idiot for what I’ve been doing up until now!

swesour•58m ago
> which is not so much concerned that their software might be buggy as that it might be lame

This is not at _all_ my interpretation of Casey and JBlow's views. How did you arrive at this conclusion?

> They're more concerned about user experience and efficiency than they are about correctness.

They're definitely very concerned about efficiency, but user experience? Are you referring to DevX? They definitely don't prize any kind of UX above correctness.

kragen•49m ago
By reading their blog posts and watching their videos.
imwally•10m ago
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