|--------|-------|------|------|-------|------| |Contract|Product|Design|Coding|Testing|Deploy| Writing Code Isn't the Bottleneck, until writing code is the bottleneck, until it's not again.
Getting a usable PRD is often the bottleneck.
Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
11–20 of 269 posts
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#12I don't understand Myth 1 (Developers Spend Most of Their Time Writing Code). They quote a study in which developers report to spend 11-14% of their day coding. The rest is stuff like solution design and meetings. The insinuation is that AI can at most automate 14% of your day. The problem with this argument is that once you have code, some (not all) of the precursors to code go away.
Okay. Show me the evidence that AI has an impact on productivity when doing design work. Or reducing meeting load. My own experience is that AI doesn't tighten the design cycle, and in fact might extend it by encouraging gold plating.
What kind of shape of evidence would you find convincing?
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#13I don't understand Myth 1 (Developers Spend Most of Their Time Writing Code). They quote a study in which developers report to spend 11-14% of their day coding. The rest is stuff like solution design and meetings. The insinuation is that AI can at most automate 14% of your day. The problem with this argument is that once you have code, some (not all) of the precursors to code go away.
If Claude told you to work on a task that you don't want to work on, or make a design choice that you think is wrong, would you do it? If not, then it can't really replace things like design or meetings. (Note that this is subtly but importantly different than the "vibecoding" model, where you just don't bother to supervise Claude's decisions.)
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay. Show me the evidence that AI has an impact on productivity when doing design work. Or reducing meeting load. My own experience is that AI doesn't tighten the design cycle, and in fact might extend it by encouraging gold plating.
What kind of shape of evidence would you find convincing?
People working fewer hours :)
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay. Show me the evidence that AI has an impact on productivity when doing design work. Or reducing meeting load. My own experience is that AI doesn't tighten the design cycle, and in fact might extend it by encouraging gold plating.
What kind of shape of evidence would you find convincing?
Self-reported or observational data capturing time spent for categories of task ala every other similar study in this space?
This isn't exactly novel territory, here, Simon. Let's not pretend I'm asking for something strange, unprecedented, or unreasonable.
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#16>On my visits to the Bay Area, I would ask AI researchers or interns why they are doing their current research or projects, when in a year or three agentic LLMs could probably do them;
This is such a weird point to make that doesn't become correct just because everyone makes it, all the time. Why clean the ocean if some magic future tech will clean them? Why save the world now if some benevolent AI is 'just around the corner' and will do it for us? And people have been making this point for years now, and it's not like my job got any easier. I just got more AI.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51294/waiting-for-the...
And I say that as someone who uses Claude Code in complex environments almost hourly; I, as the human, still have to do the thinking as Claude still 'can't jump' [1] and I have seen no evidence that they (or similar AI, any time soon) will 'jump' like a human brain does.
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#17I don't understand Myth 1 (Developers Spend Most of Their Time Writing Code). They quote a study in which developers report to spend 11-14% of their day coding. The rest is stuff like solution design and meetings. The insinuation is that AI can at most automate 14% of your day. The problem with this argument is that once you have code, some (not all) of the precursors to code go away.
Okay. Show me the evidence that AI has an impact on productivity when doing design work. Or reducing meeting load. My own experience is that AI doesn't tighten the design cycle, and in fact might extend it by encouraging gold plating.
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Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#18>On my visits to the Bay Area, I would ask AI researchers or interns why they are doing their current research or projects, when in a year or three agentic LLMs could probably do them; This is such a weird point to make that doesn't become correct just because everyone makes it, all the time. Why clean the ocean if some magic future tech will clean them? Why save the world now if some benevolent AI is 'just around th…
Also, if you believe your well-paying job is eventually going to be automated you would be prudent to bank the money while you prepare for the future.
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#19I feel like all you need to know about how seriously to take this is that they cite that ancient early-2025 METR study, and describe it in the text as "recently one even found..."
Re: Eight Myths on Software Engineering and GenAI
#20I don't understand Myth 1 (Developers Spend Most of Their Time Writing Code). They quote a study in which developers report to spend 11-14% of their day coding. The rest is stuff like solution design and meetings. The insinuation is that AI can at most automate 14% of your day. The problem with this argument is that once you have code, some (not all) of the precursors to code go away.
Okay. Show me the evidence that AI has an impact on productivity when doing design work. Or reducing meeting load. My own experience is that AI doesn't tighten the design cycle, and in fact might extend it by encouraging gold plating.
It does because you can now just steamroll features out the door and make everyone look bad that’s sitting around in meetings all day