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Increasingly convinced that specs are now the source and that code is an artifact akin to a lockfile.

Distributing software libraries for multiple languages is extremely costly for a software company (such as bluesky). Quality drifts between languages, maintenance burden is huge. So: Build _ API in our teams' lang from specs

you're saying we must keep regenerating our software systems? the Phoenix Architecture ideas, that specs are enduring, the code changes, sure resonate with me. /cc @chadfowler.com bsky.app/profile/chad...

Enduring specs protect users but shift complexity into adapters, migrations and ops, creating hidden integration cost. Do you prioritise stable external contracts or internal simplicity when planning a regeneration?

This one might be too extravagant so we'll see, but... Writing software for each platform (native ios, native android, web, etc) is extremely costly and requires middleware ecosystems like react native So: Build app for target platform from specs

Amending upstream is extremely hard to do. Monkeypatching, inheritance, configuration (if allowed), or forking. So: import spec, amend with your specs, lock in with tests

Ok ok wait, then you build a reference endpoint - a server that's basically a dummy, no live data, stateless as far as possible - that can be used during development to verify against. Then it's basically a oneshot project to build apps on any platform, any language.

This means there is no reason for anything you *didn't* explicitly specify to work the same way, and this will at some point bite you in the ass.

Shopify just implemented something like that

“Nondeterministicly build other platform from specs” is a bandaid. If the spec is precise enough to do that effectively, it will look *a lot* like real code. And If we’re close to real code, we might as well be writing it with a compiler.