Post #1407444
2026-03-06 18:44 UTC
@shriramk @jschuster @lindsey @krismicinski@types.pl @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek yeah. Bryan Cantrill and I were discussing this last week. A trend I've observed is that the LLM does much better when given very precise instructions, sometimes totaling thousands of lines of written text. It reminds me of waterfall development, which never really worked. But why didn't waterfall work? Because the distance between phases was too large; by the time you were in development, it was too late to go back to requirements and iterate through design again. The LLMs sort of short-circuits that process, allowing rapid feedback; does this mean a return to waterfall development styles?
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@jschuster@hachyderm.io 2026-03-06 20:31
@cross @shriramk @lindsey @krismicinski @jfdm @csgordon @jeremysiek My understanding is that Waterfall in the most extreme sense means you can't go back to a previous phase (hence the name waterfall: it only goes in one direction). So in a technical sense, that feedback cycle isn't taking us back to waterfall. But will LLMs encourage a doc/spec-heavy style of development? Most people I know seem to think yes. In particular, the software architecture folks I know are excited about having a space to talk about architecture again. But what exactly those "specs" look like and how similar they will be to our current docs and specs is very much up for debate.