A sufficiently detailed spec is code

dokdev 11 points 2 comments March 18, 2026
haskellforall.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (2 comments)

internet_points

Well done for actually trying and failing to reproduce their results. 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.)

GeoSys

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 ...

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