A sufficiently comprehensive spec is not (necessarily) code(buttondown.com)

6 pointsby BerislavLopac3 mesi fa3 comments

A sufficiently comprehensive spec is not (necessarily) code

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/a-sufficiently-comprehensive-spec-is-not/

3 comments

This is exactly why I built these two things

https://github.com/RCSnyder/tlaplus-process-studio

This is to extract the bare minimum state machine out of users is tla+

https://github.com/RCSnyder/lights-out-swe

And pop that into input/docs/* with any other user requirements

And add your tech stack in preferences.md

And say "build me the thing described in input"

And it goes for it

squirrellous3 mesi fa

I’ve always thought about this as more of a meme than a serious point. Trivially, aren’t most of the network protocol RFCs “sufficiently comprehensive spec that isn’t code”?

bediger40003 mesi fa

Wayne is usually lots better than this. He basically defined the problem away, while missing the point of the comic. Maybe defined specifically "code" is not the tightly worded spec, but almost universally "code" is the result of the process of clarifying the vaguely worded spec. That's the point of the comic, after all. We all recognize the shorthand of "code" in the comic for the process we've all been through so many times.