Trend Tuesday: Extracting the Essence of Software

Art by @basilonmypizza: https://lnkd.in/eF8FkWzN - https://basilhefti.ch/

To polish. To finish. To refine. In any profession, finding the right balance between form and function supports success. In this sense, AI becomes sandpaper for software.

And boy can software use it. Over time, systems became too large, tried to cover too many things, and left parts half-finished. Complexity became part of the problem, as you probably know from the constant security updates you are asked to install.

How can AI help? By separating non-relevant code, the noise, from the key parts, the signal. Andrej Karpathy gives a nice example with microGPT, a 200-line, dependency-free Python implementation that brings GPT training and inference to its essence.

This is one of the most interesting uses of AI and software craftsmanship: coming back to what is necessary, and leaving out the rest. AI helps us inspect the layers in large code systems, distinguish core logic from implementation noise, and make software easier to understand, test and govern.

This matters because bloat and complexity have real cost. A simpler system is easier to secure, test and explain. A simpler process is easier to govern.

Companies that learn to use AI as sandpaper will produce better - and “nicer” - products.

Which of your systems or modules would benefit from this kind of polish? This is a conversation worth having with your team, your architects, or your board.

• Art: https://lnkd.in/eF8FkWzN https://basilhefti.ch/

• https://lnkd.in/eNXpnrEj