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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because agile has been so successful, right? ;)
In fact, agile has been extremely successful. It's the people that claim to "do agile" that invariably don't do it. But software development used to fail most of the time, and it doesn't do that anymore.
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Agile fails when folks don't adjust and tailor the process to the specific needs of their team or organization but instead try to cargo cult it.
so it's called agile when it works, but not when it doesn't, got it!
There are many projects that should not be built agentically. For things that are appropriate to build with agents, I have come to hold the strong opinion that you need to go all-in. If you built it with an agent, then you fix it with an agent, you debug it with an agent, and you change it with an agent. In that case you should not consider yourself the steward of the source code and worry about “cognitive debt”- it’…
You can inject philosophy into the agent and ensure that it sticks to it. The LLM will, with sufficient drilling, begrudgingly implement it, most important of which is SIMPLE>COMPLEX on all levels and you have to either manually or agentically continuously monitor this.
Alternatively, LLM will use its tiny context window to build a true spaghetti that even itself cannot fix any more. This is the default path, and the path that way too many has taken.
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How so? Could you give some specific examples?
My experience moving between startup/SME/corp: Smaller teams have more agency to move and usually team members with broader responsibility and understanding of the systems. Also possibly closer to stakeholders, so are already involved in specification creation and know where automation can add value. Add an AI agent and they can pick and choose where they can be most effective at a system level. Bigger teams have cle…
But... as team size grows, LLMs can be more valuable in other ways. Larger teams typically have larger codebases to comprehend, more users, more bug reports to triage, etc. It's SO much easier to get up to speed on a big existing codebase now.
Unfortunately I think Cognitive Debt is the cry of the software craftsperson who thought they were an Engineer. Upon working with the agent subcontractor, the agent factory, the agent part vendor, they approached it as a craft; they found themselves wanting to walk through the offices of the subcontractor reviewing screens, inspect pieces at the factory, and get the internal design for the parts they ordered. It's na…
Because waterfall software engineering has been so successful, right? ;-)
Plus, 'agile' in quite a lot companies is really waterfall that's been broken into sprints without the planning of proper waterfall or the discovery and learning of real Agile. The software still gets built though. Maybe software is actually quite easy to plan.
Carmack once wrote something I’ve been holding dear ever since, and I’m paraphrasing, ”even if you copy paste code, make sure you write it”. And it actually works, the outcome of just having your brain make your fingers type the code is easily differentiated from just pasting it.
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Or, stay with me here, the LLMs were trained on how we, statistically, write.
Anytime I see “this is not just x, it’s y” i can almost guarantee with high degree of confidence that slop was used.
But these days, when I write in that formal style, people sometimes say it sounds like AI. That has been a difficult and frustrating point for me.
I still find the subtle difference hard to understand.
There are many projects that should not be built agentically. For things that are appropriate to build with agents, I have come to hold the strong opinion that you need to go all-in. If you built it with an agent, then you fix it with an agent, you debug it with an agent, and you change it with an agent. In that case you should not consider yourself the steward of the source code and worry about “cognitive debt”- it’…
I think the antidote is ownership. Every part of a company or product needs some person or small group that owns it, understands it, and feels ownership over its long-term health. They review or decide what level of review changes to it can take. So much of what makes high-functioning teams work is a sense of ownership and stewardship, and what makes low-functioning teams break is a lack thereof. Someone with pride,…
Cognitive Debt has existed much earlier before LLMs became mainstream. Technical people got good at their jobs and then was promoted to management. After time they lost their technical abilities but if they are a good manager they kept up to date with the technological landscape and used their engineering thinking to ensure that the people below them worked to their optimum efficiency to achieve the companies goals.…
While this isn't a unique perspective, I think it's wild more people don't understand this. What happened is everyone is being "promoted" to staff+ level engineer and they're realizing the realities of that situation. The funny part is that these are the same people who are upset that these folks up the food chain "do nothing".
So no wonder people aren't happy