The five orders of ignorance (2000)

3 comments

• svilen_dobrev 3 days ago
  "product is the knowledge in the code, not the code itself".. and other interesting observations. That might be relevant in current to-AI-or-not-AI questions

  Published as book - The Laws of Software Process: A New Model for the Production and Management of Software , 2003, Phillip G. Armour

  https://www.amazon.com/Laws-Software-Process-Production-Mana...

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  • nasreddin 55 minutes ago
    Essentially the idea of a context window in modern LLM models, there is implicit domain knowledge to every task in which no matter how capable the model may be, if not in the context, the software will not be functional.
  • datsci_est_2015 2 hours ago
    Incredibly prescient given what’s happening now 25 years later. This message resonates with me quite strongly! Thanks for sharing.
• mvr123456 1 hour ago
  The intro is really good and stands alone. I'd point any outsider to this as a decent description of hacking, programming, software engineering, prototyping in general.
• sublinear 1 hour ago
  > the real job is not writing the code, or even building the system — it is acquiring the necessary knowledge to build the system.

  Not only very true, but the grammar will trigger those who insist on forcing the "that's written by AI" meme. I love it.