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The Productivity Mirage

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Re: The Productivity Mirage

#151

Post by ballsac »

haritha-j wrote: post #109
discreteevent wrote: post #84

There's a bubble where VC backed companies are not producing anything that people are really using or paying for. So to justify their valuation they instead try to show just how productive they are. Surely if they are this busy and productive they must be worth something? (This could also explain the hype around AI which is all about "productivity/how" and nothing about "what") This article compares these kinds of co…

I wonder where the people who spend hours and hours making the perfect gaming setup isntead of gaming, or the audiophiles who spend their lives in an eternal quest to get the perfect equipemnt instead of listening to music, end up in this analogy.

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Re: The Productivity Mirage

#152

Post by AlexandrB »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #50
marcus_holmes wrote: post #28

This is so important. I've seen so many fellow technologists (and I've skated this myself) obsess about their setup to the point that they're spending more time on that than the actual thing they're building. The whole "90% of my time as a coder is spent typing, so I should optimise my ability to type fast" is so, well, wrong. 90% of our time should be spent thinking, and most of that reading.

> The whole "90% of my time as a coder is spent typing, so I should optimise my ability to type fast" is so, well, wrong. 90% of our time should be spent thinking, and most of that reading. Any software engineer who proclaims "90% of my time is spent typing" does not understand two fundamental industry axioms: Software is the manifestation of a solution to a problem. Define the problem which needs to be solved. When…

Both of you are describing a "waterfall model" of coding, where you conceive of the solution in its entirety before simply writing it down. I don't know if everyone else works this way, but I don't. I prefer to try things in the code and use those attempts to guide and refine my understanding. With the latter approach, being able to quickly and easily modify code is essential because it shortens the testing loop.

Edit: From GP:

> 90% of our time should be spent thinking, and most of that reading.

Reading what though? I assume you mean reading code. If you're reading code, being able to navigate through it quickly is important to maintaining context in your head. If the tool you're using makes navigation hard, it's easy to lose track of what you're doing. Obviously this can be taken to extremes, but spending some time investing in being able to navigate a codebase quickly is not wasted effort.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#153

Post by aerodexis »

nine_k wrote: post #44

I think it's a false dichotomy. A good craftsman cares deeply about their tools. But the tools are a means to an end, not a toy. I have a bunch of small productivity tools I made to match my workflows: tiny shell scripts and functions, custom Emacs functions and settings, small tools to control windows placement, etc. Cumulatively I spent many days building and adjusting it. But when I need to jump into a task, thing…

Seems like the difference b/w samurai and ninja. The samurai saw his sword as an extension of his soul - a disrespect to the sword was a disrespect to the man. The ninja used the sword like any other tool - and if it was helpful to use it to pry something open, there you go.

the samurai mentality doesn't make sense in today's economy.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#154

Post by hilariously »

nine_k wrote: post #44

I think it's a false dichotomy. A good craftsman cares deeply about their tools. But the tools are a means to an end, not a toy. I have a bunch of small productivity tools I made to match my workflows: tiny shell scripts and functions, custom Emacs functions and settings, small tools to control windows placement, etc. Cumulatively I spent many days building and adjusting it. But when I need to jump into a task, thing…

And when you get that new job with that new stack? Switching back to the windows laptop? I learned early on in my career how to live off the land and use the tools I have given to be efficient because it is rare that I get to decide the tooling. Cross platform tools? Usually can get away with them, but beside Jetbrains stuff its all over the place.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#155

Post by ballsac »

jaccola wrote: post #96
discreteevent wrote: post #84

There's a bubble where VC backed companies are not producing anything that people are really using or paying for. So to justify their valuation they instead try to show just how productive they are. Surely if they are this busy and productive they must be worth something? (This could also explain the hype around AI which is all about "productivity/how" and nothing about "what") This article compares these kinds of co…

Not sure it’s a bubble so much as a story as old as time… signal hacking. Always has happened and always will

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Re: The Productivity Mirage

#156

Post by Hasz »

The issue is recognition. Everyone can see and admire shiny tools. Very few people can look at an empty editor or stub and see a good new product/feature. So lots of focus on tools, because lots can see it, and little focus on the what, because it is obscure, difficult to see, etc by most.

I like to marie kondo my tools -- if it is not bringing me joy to use or making my life easier, I yeet it. If it is, it stays.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#157

Post by jimberlage »

You have to make or use just enough productivity tools not to fall behind, but otherwise it's a trap.

I used to check once a quarter. With AI, I devote 1-2 days a week to the meta-task of improving my tooling, but I'm sure that will fade once AI tooling becomes more standardized.

It's not worth being one of those guys who gets too into the tools, because it can keep you from the actual valuable work. Plus, you are then judged not as a regular engineer, but as a person who is supposed to have some secret productivity sauce, and when people see that it doesn't make more of a difference they can start to discount your opinion.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#158

Post by treszkai »

This is the difference between efficiency (that the author is aiming for) and effectiveness (that Bob has – solving the right problem and only that problem). The two are not measured on the same axis: while Bob could have become maybe 20% more efficient with a better setup, and thus increase the delivered value by 20%, the author was already saturated on efficiency, and no amount of better tooling would have made him win the hackathon, because he was throttled at higher levels of abstraction (such as direction, ideas, vision, market insight).

Similarly to how no amount of efficiency gains would make Microsoft produce quality software, because they optimize for other metrics.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#159

Post by DrewADesign »

skydhash wrote: post #120
DrewADesign wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a balance. It’s easy to spend more time dickering with tools than you save by having those tools. I used to have this amazing neovim setup that worked exactly like I wanted it to. Unfortunately, it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically , it was too big of a PITA to change to be flexible on the run. Then a couple of unrelated plugin changes caused some big problems with my s…

> Unfortunately, it was fragile, and while it was theoretically infinitely flexible, practically, it was too big of a PITA to change to be flexible on the run. I don’t know. I switch back from neovim to vim for some reason, but that vim setup has followed me for years even when I switched to emacs. And while I changed my emacs settings every once in a while, it has always been stable to me. I’m not questioning your c…

I’m sure there‘a some minimum setup that would meet my needs and do ok— I just don’t really see a need to. The only time I get annoyed is when I need some of the deeper-cut ex commands and they’re not supported.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#160

Post by nine_k »

lobofta wrote: post #64
loveparade wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It matters that you enjoy working with your tools. Even if they don't make you 10x more productive, focusing on what you're working on and enjoying the process is the most important part. Especially in the age of LLMs I think a lot of us hate the current tools that force you to context switch between N agents and terminals. Constant context switching takes the joy out of work and prevents you from getting in…

I don't think they force you to do that. Not trying to be pedantic, but you can also just wait for a single agent to finish its work. Nowadays I often feel that that is a better spend of my time. Especially because it allows my mind to wonder about the next thing and what I could have missed. Before I was doing the context switching dance I felt I was going at 10x, but realized I was only perhaps going at 2x. Now I h…

The agent is your tool then. I suppose you have put some effort into tuning it, by writing and honing various .md files, providing MCP servers and access tokens where access is needed, etc.
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