The five orders of ignorance (2000)
cacm.acm.org

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17 points

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svilen_dobrev

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4 days ago

5 comments

svilen_dobrev ・ 4 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...

  • nasreddin ・ 41 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 ・ an 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 ・ 2 hours 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.