AI-Assisted Development: An Interesting Open-Source Project Worth Exploring

[saschbe]

Have you seen this project?

https://github.com/storytold

They're recreating several Adobe applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro, and now even Microsoft Word!
These are open-source applications written from scratch in Rust, with extensive AI assistance during development.
I find it quite impressive how much AI-assisted software development has evolved.
It makes me wonder what we could achieve with QElectroTech using similar development methods.

What do you think? 🙂

[arummler]

Up to now it has not been proven whether these agentically created clones are maintainable and stable - they are just been published in the last two weeks. Quality management is a problem, particularly of GUI operations which the AI cannot do itself or does not have a "feeling" (metric) for.

Another issue is the specification, exactly what is being discussed e.g. in #1267 Sure you could say "copy EPLAN" but

• Is it really the pinnacle of electrical schematic design? Why are there other programy even around? E.g. there are people here who are into hydraulics / fluid circuits and would appreciate their specifc domains integrated.
• How do you even explain all the details? For those more common programs they might have included hand books or all the info on the net, I don't know. But for the more exotic, more expensice software, there is far less available.
• Intellectual property... we see the problem already with the standards. You might be able to argue that there is for something only one accepted technical way how to do it but follow too close a GUI design might invite a cease and desist.

Many of the MRs of the last couple months were already vide coded or at least supported by one LLM or another. On a single feature basis it seems to work quite good but I believe it still requires architecture. Basically what exactly you want to achieve and that's tricky in this project.

Just some provocative thoughts:
It can also turn out completly differently as some predict and in one year you get for 200€ in tokens your perfectly tailored for your use case and preferences software (but not interoperable with anybody else ;) ). That's then likely the end of both commercial softwares as well as this open source project. Or your LLM just does the design and you do not need any sofware at all anymore. (And ten years later it gets build by a Boston Dynamics robot without any human in the loop. :) )

[scorpio810]

https://qelectrotech.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=23471#p23471

Utilisation de QET pour schémas PID

[scorpio810]

Just some provocative thoughts:
It can also turn out completly differently as some predict and in one year you get for 200€ in tokens your perfectly tailored for your use case and preferences software (but not interoperable with anybody else ;) ). That's then likely the end of both commercial softwares as well as this open source project. Or your LLM just does the design and you do not need any sofware at all anymore. (And ten years later it gets build by a Boston Dynamics robot without any human in the loop. :) )

I don’t want to see that future world …
I know I don’t have long to live…

And who’ll benefit from it?? Nobody – nobody’s buying computer hardware at the moment, given the outrageous prices.

[scorpio810]

It’s a shame to have wasted 17 years of my life and work, slaving away on this an open-source project ~perhaps 8 hours by days – for what? I’ve ruined my health and neglected my family life, without gaining anything financially or in terms of respect…

I know I don’t have long to live…

[proll39]

Merci Laurent pour tout ce travail.
Une solution loin des usines à gaz du marché ; que j'utilise à titre professionnel.
Tu iras au paradis c'est certain 🥳

[scorpio810]

If all this hard work, carried out over such a long period, is down to the fact that I have acted as a ‘white knight’ by spontaneously offering my help to millions of engineering students, both young and old, to enable them to broaden their experience and knowledge across various disciplines, then I am proud of it.

[Opus-id]

Hello everyone,
Since @scorpio810 linked my P&ID message, here are a few words about where it comes from.
My goal is simple: to make my daily work easier, and my colleagues' work too. We draw P&ID for water treatment plants, and no affordable tool really fits our needs.
It is also my way of saying thank you. For years, QElectroTech has been offered freely by people who gave it their time, evenings and weekends. If my work can add something useful to it, that is the best way I know to give back.
AI helps me because I'm not a developer, but it doesn't replace the community. I'm building on QET's architecture, in small PRs, and the maintainers stay the judges of what goes in. Without 17 years of your work, @scorpio810, and that of all the contributors, there would be nothing to build on.
Thank you

---

Bonjour à tous,
Puisque @scorpio810 a mis en lien mon message sur le P&ID, voici quelques mots sur son origine.
Mon but est simple : faciliter mon travail au quotidien, et celui de mes collègues. Nous dessinons des P&ID pour des usines de traitement des eaux, et aucun outil abordable ne répond vraiment à nos besoins.
C'est aussi ma façon de dire merci. Depuis des années, QElectroTech est offert librement par des gens qui y ont donné leur temps, leurs soirées et leurs week-ends. Si mon travail peut y ajouter quelque chose d'utile, c'est la meilleure façon que je connaisse de rendre la pareille.
L'IA m'aide parce que je ne suis pas développeur, mais elle ne remplace pas la communauté. Je construis sur l'architecture de QET, par petites PR, et les mainteneurs restent juges de ce qui est intégré. Sans tes 17 ans de travail, @scorpio810, et celui de tous les contributeurs, il n'y aurait rien sur quoi bâtir.
Merci.