A sufficiently detailed spec is code(haskellforall.com)
haskellforall.com
A sufficiently detailed spec is code
https://haskellforall.com/2026/03/a-sufficiently-detailed-spec-is-code
3 comments
It's so easy to make a specification which can't be implemented (or shouldn't be). Very often, I go back and tweak the specification, after I start the implementation and figure out which assumptions are wrong ...
Dupe of
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47434047
which has 335 comments and counting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47434047
which has 335 comments and counting.
But the point from the original comic version kind of makes it seem like specs are useless, which I don't believe is true. Just like reimplementations can be useful (directly so for property testing or golden testing, but also for learning what things worked and what didn't), a specification can be useful even though it is informal or incomplete in that it guides the real implementation. (Like "plan mode", for you vibers.)