Code was very rarely the bottleneck in the first place.
If programmer productivity was something we actively optimized for, we wouldn't have cram programmers like sardines in warm and noisy open floor offices with 2000 ppm CO2 levels and then further constantly interrupt them with emails and slack pings and meetings all day long, Jira rigmarole wouldn't make up a significant portion of what they did, programmers would have instead mostly been thinking and programming.
We've always had the ability to 2X if not 10X the output of each and every one of those poor souls. You don't end with this sort of programming purgatory because it's a productivity optimum, it very clearly isn't, but because it's a billable hours optimum and/or an org chart clout optimum.
baron3dl 12 minutes ago [-]
What is the right, best software organization in the current era of AI coding? This question is critical and wholly unanswered in comprehensive research along the same axis as Accelerate (2018, Forsgren, Humble, Kim).
There are a lot of (excruciatingly) long-form posts about what folks are pioneering but not a whole lot of follow up about what failed. Where are the short posts on the negative space? How did halving your staff work out? Flattening your org? All those dark factories, what haven't they produced? How about all the other things tried, failed, and unceremoniously scrapped?
We need to explore and communicate the negative space more efficiently. Don't repeat the same mistakes, and don't make me read 2653 words when 300 do it better.
mgaunard 25 minutes ago [-]
The cost of code actually increased; code debt is being accumulated faster than we can clean it up.
trollbridge 10 minutes ago [-]
Pangram reports this post was 100% AI generated.
happytoexplain 2 minutes ago [-]
Code was never expensive.
jboss10 13 minutes ago [-]
> Gemini 4 helped with the editing.
Does this guy have access to Gemini 4 already?
I'm guessing Gemma 4 was happy to be mistaken for Gemini and didn't catch this mistake.
trollbridge 10 minutes ago [-]
“Helping” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence! It appears to be 100% AI.
ilovefood 8 minutes ago [-]
Yes correct, Gemma. Will correct it shortly.
add-sub-mul-div 5 minutes ago [-]
You don't build credibility by putting out slop and correcting it every time someone points out that it's wrong. You think it's our job to proofread and fact-check?
cineticdaffodil 43 minutes ago [-]
Can a llm predict the price of a change to a codebase in tokens and predict the origin of the price, aka cam it see good and bad architecture?
arjie 31 minutes ago [-]
Some code bases better than others but the top models can.
mathgeek 40 minutes ago [-]
Ask it to do so, would love to know your results.
antonvs 35 minutes ago [-]
The worse problem is blog posts after the cost of writing collapsed.
Not everything has to be written as though it’s a middle manager’s idea of what makes for a good TED talk.
nvme0n1p1 22 minutes ago [-]
I closed the tab after seeing the AI hero image. Good to know I didn't miss anything.
JSR_FDED 13 minutes ago [-]
You did miss something. But the picture doesn’t help…why would you start an article with an image that telegraphs “low effort”?
zo1 17 minutes ago [-]
Reading the domain-name had the same effect for me.
obmelvin 13 minutes ago [-]
You discount people's blogs based on them having a non-western name? Maybe I've misunderstood your comment, but the domain is just their name.
ilovefood 11 minutes ago [-]
I can't change my name, but happy to change the hero picture :))
aplummer 26 minutes ago [-]
I read this entire article and didn’t sniff AI, plus it had some good insights…?
nwah1 24 minutes ago [-]
Feels like a human-authored outline that was run through AI to make it into an article.
ilovefood 15 minutes ago [-]
I've written this myself, Gemini 4 did a bit of editing:
> What follows is a cleaned-up version of notes I accumulated over the past year. Gemini 4 helped with the editing.
The image is made by an AI image generator on fal.ai. It's better I spare you all my design skills :)
hgomersall 21 minutes ago [-]
Well it contains a typo, so it made a cock up.
lcampbell 14 minutes ago [-]
More than that, the AI disclaimer itself is a hallucination:
> Gemini 4 helped with the editing.
There is no Gemini 4, unless the author is writing from the future.
ilovefood 10 minutes ago [-]
You are correct, my bad. I meant to write Gemma 4. I'll update.
sodapopcan 20 minutes ago [-]
AI image, though.
JSR_FDED 17 minutes ago [-]
Yes the article took a while to get going, but once it did it was thoughtful and well reasoned.
ilovefood 15 minutes ago [-]
Thank you very much for the kind words :)
j45 41 minutes ago [-]
Software development has always evolved. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quicker.
LLMs have brought a different unlock, and for everything we're seeing become easier, it allows people learn to use the tools to take on solving problems that couldn't be approached before.
CurbStomper 39 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 17:05:01 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
If programmer productivity was something we actively optimized for, we wouldn't have cram programmers like sardines in warm and noisy open floor offices with 2000 ppm CO2 levels and then further constantly interrupt them with emails and slack pings and meetings all day long, Jira rigmarole wouldn't make up a significant portion of what they did, programmers would have instead mostly been thinking and programming.
We've always had the ability to 2X if not 10X the output of each and every one of those poor souls. You don't end with this sort of programming purgatory because it's a productivity optimum, it very clearly isn't, but because it's a billable hours optimum and/or an org chart clout optimum.
There are a lot of (excruciatingly) long-form posts about what folks are pioneering but not a whole lot of follow up about what failed. Where are the short posts on the negative space? How did halving your staff work out? Flattening your org? All those dark factories, what haven't they produced? How about all the other things tried, failed, and unceremoniously scrapped?
We need to explore and communicate the negative space more efficiently. Don't repeat the same mistakes, and don't make me read 2653 words when 300 do it better.
Does this guy have access to Gemini 4 already?
I'm guessing Gemma 4 was happy to be mistaken for Gemini and didn't catch this mistake.
Not everything has to be written as though it’s a middle manager’s idea of what makes for a good TED talk.
> What follows is a cleaned-up version of notes I accumulated over the past year. Gemini 4 helped with the editing.
The image is made by an AI image generator on fal.ai. It's better I spare you all my design skills :)
> Gemini 4 helped with the editing.
There is no Gemini 4, unless the author is writing from the future.
LLMs have brought a different unlock, and for everything we're seeing become easier, it allows people learn to use the tools to take on solving problems that couldn't be approached before.