GDD: Self-Evolving Software
At The Pirate Baby We are pioneering the practice of Generative Driven Design in software development. GDD is a philosophy that prioritizes machine-readable, generative-friendly patterns over traditional (human) software engineering practices.
How GDD works
GDD reduces the need for human intervention over time.
With GDD, we create GenAI processes within an application that modify/improve the application codebase in response to stimuli. These stimuli can be a feature request from a user, an error log from a production system, or a command from a human Software Engineer.
The way that this code is modified is an important part of GDD; each iteration must make the code more machine-readable, so future GenAI processes are increasingly able to make high-quality changes to the codebase.
How GDD differs from traditional Software Engineering
The most important principle is that in GDD, code is optimized for fully generative maintenance and improvement. Traditional software best practices and indications of code quality are not always applicable in GDD, because GDD is bots-first by design.
GDD puts the needs of bot developers first, humans second, to prioritize automation.
GDD software evolves over time with less intervention from human developers; humans (like you!) tell the software how to evolve, and the software improves itself.
How GDD differs from AI-Assisted/Copilot Engineering
AI code assistants/copilots are tools used by human Software Engineers to make the process of traditional Software Engineering faster and easier. These tools autocomplete code, suggest edits, and respond to prompts from human Engineers. These tools augment a traditional workflow, helping humans program code that is optimized for humans. Because of this, AI code bots and copilots are limited to utilities that enhance traditional software engineering practices.
Is GDD the answer?
We think so. Meaningful progress requires that both tools and process evolve, together; while software tooling has made leaps forward with GenAI, the methods by which code is crafted have remained largely unchanged. GDD is the natural advancement of software development practices built for the generative AI era.