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Mythical Man Month

martinfowler.com

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Re: Mythical Man Month

#101

Post by boron1006 »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #97
boron1006 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, the value of software has dropped to 1/10 of what it was before Claude code existed. I’m being glib, but there’s a whole class of software (eg simple crud apps) that just don’t have any marginal value anymore. So it doesn’t matter if it’s 10X faster or 100X faster. 100 x $0 is still 0.

You mean the price of software, as well as the cost. The value (to the user) is the same if not more.

Unless the user just vibe-codes their own version.

Which is what I’m seeing at my job. All of these “afternoon vibe code” projects never actually get users because everyone just vibe-codes their own.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#102

Post by [deleted] »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #99
doesnt_know wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the 10x claims, but since when has salary been any indication of productivity?

Productivity is a value measured in dollars. So if you’re 10x more productive, someone somewhere is making 10x the $ value from your output. You should expect this to be reflected in the labour market somewhere. Maybe not your own salary, but in somebody’s salary.

[deleted]

Re: Mythical Man Month

#103

Post by Pamar »

majormajor wrote: post #61
alasdair_ wrote: post #8

Notably, his essay “no silver bullet” states that there has never been a new technology or way of thinking or working that has led to a 10X increase in the speed of software development. That was true for almost seventy years until roughly last year. AI is the silver bullet - my output is genuinely 10X what it was before claude code existed.

First counterexample that comes to mind: Rails vs 90s networked/shared line-of-business crud app development was a 10x factor. It also enabled a lot of internal tools that wouldn't have been worth doing without it. But after people's expectations adjusted it was just back on the treadmill. I don't think we've found a new steady-state yet, but I have some gut feeling guesses about where it's going to be.

90% of my my experience has always been dealing with large-ish corporate systems. I am in Europe, so YMMV even when talking about corporate instead of smaller scale projects.

In my experience stuff like RAILS had negligible impact in my field because companies would always require solid backup from some big name vendor (MS, Oracle, IBM, Sun - back in the day, or even SAP).

So most if not all the smaller silver bullets did not even make a blimp on the radar... and stuff like Java or .NET, while definitely better than C or COBOL... did not really deliver in terms of productivity boost (in part because, as noted in the message I am answering to, expectations kept growing at the same pace)

Re: Mythical Man Month

#104

Post by jwr »

I re-read that book every 10 years and try to think carefully about whether what Brooks wrote still holds.

The last three times I read the book, everything held.

This time, I'm not so sure: AI does change things significantly. Perhaps not for all teams and not all scales of software, but in my case (solo developer, complex software system) I did measure a 12x productivity increase [1].

Also, some of the problems Brooks describes became much easier, if not borderline trivial with AI. For example, maintaining design documentation that stays consistent with the software being built. I do this and it is no longer a problem.

I still think most of what Brooks wrote is applicable today. I think the biggest difference is that AI enables smaller teams to work on larger systems, and the biggest benefit is for single-person teams (ahem) like me. I see it as another step that allows me to tackle larger systems: the previous one was Clojure which reduced incidental complexity so significantly that I was able to develop the system to the size it is today. AI is the next step: it allows me to build features that would have taken me years in a span of months. Not because of "vibe coding", but primarily because I can work on a set of design documents and turn my ideas into a coherent design.

[1] For the nitpickers: yes, measured, not guessed. Yes, the metric was reasonable. No, it wasn't "lines of code" or something equally silly, in fact one of my main goals is reducing code size as much as possible. Yes, I compared larger time periods: 2 months with AI to an average of 12 months of the previous year. No, the metric wasn't gamed: this is a solo business and I have no interest in gaming my own metrics. I earn a living from this work, so this is as objective as it gets.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#105

Post by chickensong »

Towaway69 wrote: post #70
chickensong wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure those are great examples. Why not just consider normal apps? I don't think we'll see AAA game velocity change until asset generation progresses quite a bit, not to mention stuff like rigging. Even then, there's still a layer between code and engine where you have to wire everything together which an LLM will struggle with. Replacing some old COBOL is probably more of a management decision based on appeti…

I think your answer is the reason why. LLM performance is fine when applied to everything they can do. Take LLM out that safe space and suddenly they are no silver bullet, in fact they are unless. So of course those making the 10x claim mean in the safe space where LLM can handle all activities required. You can’t have it both ways 10x and difficult and confusing tasks for LLMs.

Right, I get that. I'm just saying it seems wrong to throw up minority examples. Nobody is pumping out AAA games at speed with LLMs, nor is anyone claiming to do so. There will likely always be some areas where LLMs are bad or useless.

How many people are writing crud apps using mainstream languages vs COBOL though? You don't need 100% silver bullet 1-shot everything, just to recognize the signals that for many use cases, there's a significant shift happening. The safe space is expanding and velocity is increasing.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#106

Post by darkwater »

boron1006 wrote: post #101
zemvpferreira wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the price of software, as well as the cost. The value (to the user) is the same if not more.

Unless the user just vibe-codes their own version. Which is what I’m seeing at my job. All of these “afternoon vibe code” projects never actually get users because everyone just vibe-codes their own.

But GP statement is still true. You just cut out a middleman.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#107

Post by boron1006 »

darkwater wrote: post #106
boron1006 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the user just vibe-codes their own version. Which is what I’m seeing at my job. All of these “afternoon vibe code” projects never actually get users because everyone just vibe-codes their own.

But GP statement is still true. You just cut out a middleman.

But “your software” isn’t bringing value anymore if people don’t use it.

The things that the software does might have value, but the marginal utility of your software is effectively 0.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#108

Post by aerhardt »

jwr wrote: post #104

I re-read that book every 10 years and try to think carefully about whether what Brooks wrote still holds. The last three times I read the book, everything held. This time, I'm not so sure: AI does change things significantly. Perhaps not for all teams and not all scales of software, but in my case (solo developer, complex software system) I did measure a 12x productivity increase [1]. Also, some of the problems Broo…

Dario Amodei said in the most recent interview with Dwarkesh that Anthropic currently gets achieves an increase of around 20-30% coding productivity, which tracks with my experience. What do you do to reap orders of magnitude more?

Also, how much more money do you make? Or are you working less?

Re: Mythical Man Month

#109

Post by codingdave »

alasdair_ wrote: post #8

Notably, his essay “no silver bullet” states that there has never been a new technology or way of thinking or working that has led to a 10X increase in the speed of software development. That was true for almost seventy years until roughly last year. AI is the silver bullet - my output is genuinely 10X what it was before claude code existed.

The disconnect here is a lack of proof that your increase in personal output actually increases the speed of software development. Considering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety%E2%80%93ninety_rule as a joking, but true fact of how software projects go, does AI skip that 2nd 90%? Or do we add a whole new bottleneck of review and corrections, and still need to code that last 90%?

When I measure software dev, delivery of code isn't even a metric I care about. It is a key part of the process, to be sure, but I care about results - Did we ship? Did it work? Do we have happier customers and a smaller bug list?

In my experience, while I can answer "yes" to those questions on people who use AI assistance surgically, applying it where its strengths lie... I can answer an emphatic "No" for the teams I've worked with who are "AI-first", making the AI usage itself part of their goals.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#110

Post by jdlshore »

jwr wrote: post #104

I re-read that book every 10 years and try to think carefully about whether what Brooks wrote still holds. The last three times I read the book, everything held. This time, I'm not so sure: AI does change things significantly. Perhaps not for all teams and not all scales of software, but in my case (solo developer, complex software system) I did measure a 12x productivity increase [1]. Also, some of the problems Broo…

What did you measure? It’s a famously difficult problem, so I’m genuinely curious.
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