Elizabeth Ayer5d ago

I'm a big fan of this explanation/rant from Andrew Murphy.

Taken as a whole, there are many bottlenecks in a corporate software development process. The "load-bearing" calendar is a great example!

Speeding up code creation just increases pressure on the bottleneck, which decreases throughput.

https://andrewmurphy.io/blog/if-you-thought-the-speed-of-writing-code-was-your-problem-you-have-bigger-problems

If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem - you have bigger problems | Debugging Leadership

AI coding tools are optimising the wrong thing and nobody wants to hear it. Writing code was already fast. The bottleneck is everything else: unclear requirements, review queues, terrified deploy cultures, and an org chart that needs six meetings to decide what colour the button should be.

Debugging Leadership
Show threadElizabeth Ayer5d ago

So why are we still trying to optimize code creation?

For decades, people with power - executives and product people - have been shifting the blame for strategy failures and poor market insight onto development "productivity."

This AI moment should be incredibly clarifying. Like, it should be the reductio ad absurdum of a productivity-centric approach.

Show threadElizabeth Ayer5d ago

The fact that we are *not* seeing wildly improving software all around us tells us everything we need to know.

There is no flourishing of value delivery, new product categories, more needs being satisfied better. It’s the opposite.

All we are seeing is decreases in quality, because 👏 code 👏 creation 👏 is not 👏 the problem.

Show threadLadder Logic 🇨🇦4d ago
@elizayer
Almost all of the code written by the major software companies since the late 80’s has been bloatware. Especially operating systems. The days when programming was an art and minimizing resource usage was the primary consideration are long gone. If that code is what AI and these LLM’s are being “trained” on then expect software to continue its downward spiral.
Show threadpoleguy looking for lost tools
@GuitarSith @elizayer ha! Yes. Also when upper management tells lower management that everyone is being judged on "efficiency" as defined by how many tokens they use up, with no denominator, you are guaranteed to get more bloat. Or at best case: 9 extra copies of the code, lots of documentation, some sim city bots, a side hustle, and 1 nicely written program.
Apr 8 at 2:49pmTusky
Show threadLadder Logic 🇨🇦1d ago
@poleguy @elizayer
The Steve Ballmer effect. Play everyone off against everyone else, which resulted in Vista, probably one of the worst incarnations of Windows ever foisted upon us. Business Objects, where I was working at the time, implemented the same methodology. It was brutal and only took them a single “not meeting expectations” review to see me walk out the door.