I'm a big fan of this explanation/rant from Andrew Murphy.
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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.
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Absolutely:
"More code, less understanding. That's not a productivity gain. That's a time bomb with a nicer dashboard." -
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.@elizayer yes, this. Code creation hasn’t been an issue for a long, long, long time. See “no silver bullet” (https://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks_1986_-_No_Silver_Bullet.pdf) written in *1986*.
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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.
@elizayer I've listened to a few podcasts now where software company executives (and even a CEO, who I would have expected to know better because he's a CEO) have talked about how much faster their teams are producing code, and since their QA teams can't keep up they've fired those people and are using Claude for QA now.
I get that devs don't study management subjects (I was one myself, many years ago) so they won't necessarily know how to find and fix bottlenecks, but I'm genuinely disappointed that software industry executives don't realise they're in a manufacturing business, nor do they understand how to optimise their value chains.
I know it's a cliche to say that people fail upwards, and I've worked with many executives who were clearly in their roles because they were intelligent, educated, and were delivering at a strategic level - but I'm beginning to wonder if software businesses are a special case.
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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.@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. -
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.
@elizayer This is a fabulously well-written article on flow, constraints, and fixing the biggest constraint first. Well worth nyour time if you do…well, anything.
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@Niall @beep @elizayer Germans have a word for accessible cars. it translates as "low floor bus". Sorry, there's no English language version of that article https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederflurtechnik
Of course, there are people whose disability doesn't allow them to take a bus, those will need a driving service.
Also, driverless subways make a lot more sense than driverless cars, because you have a much more controlled environment.
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The good news is :
Open source maintainers see an increase in the quality of AI security tools, it will soon be in the hands of the bad actors.
Then it will be mandatory to do good software and ( i will make the leap of faith that ) you have to understand the business needs to create a simple software that handle the issues.
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@elizayer to be 100% completely super fair, we are seeing a massive increase in scams. So AI is good for something. Scams. It’s good for scams.
@spazcosoft @elizayer Wasn't this always? Newly hyped stuff is used for scam, or porn, or both.
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@elizayer Exactly! I’ve been trying to explain to people, especially those pushing AI at work, that writing code is not the hard part of my job. Identifying the real-world problems and designing solutions that are as minimalist and simple as possible are the hard parts. The code is an implementation detail.
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@macronencer @mroach @elizayer
When I was working, I would regularly solve a development issue while in the shower. I think it’s the brain being unstressed that does that. -
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.@elizayer@mastodon.social Claude Code found a 23-year-old Linux vulnerability, the kind a regular human security auditor would have taken weeks or months to find (or in this case, 23 years). https://mtlynch.io/claude-code-found-linux-vulnerability/
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@macronencer @mroach @elizayer
When I was working, I would regularly solve a development issue while in the shower. I think it’s the brain being unstressed that does that.@robtherunt @macronencer @elizayer Same! I’ve half jokingly said my bathroom is the most productive room in my home office setup. Sitting on the toilet and lots of a-ha moments
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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.
@elizayer @trendytoots I can very much relate to this
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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.
@elizayer management blame productivity for strategy failure because their approach to strategy path-finding is flooding: say a bunch of random hunches overconfidently, make teams try different things out for a little while, see what sticks. They see making code faster not as a way to manufacture a good design more efficiently, but as a means to generate management fuck ups and backpedals at faster pace and greater scale.
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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. -
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.@elizayer word!
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@elizayer@mastodon.social Claude Code found a 23-year-old Linux vulnerability, the kind a regular human security auditor would have taken weeks or months to find (or in this case, 23 years). https://mtlynch.io/claude-code-found-linux-vulnerability/
@ulveon so this case justifies bazillions of dollars to be invested in needless serverfarms? And if that vulnerability wasnt discovered for 23 years it was prolly so well hidden that it was not an issue at all. Think about it.
