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Mythical Man Month

martinfowler.com

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Re: Mythical Man Month

#61

Post by majormajor »

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.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#62

Post by ventana »

hansvm wrote: post #47
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.

I haven't yet seen anyone with a concrete example project (public ideally, but even describing private efforts in enough detail to enable potential criticism would be fine) making a claim as strong as 10x. Are you willing to break the mould and show us what we're all missing?

It's more like ∞x (or N/Ax if you prefer) because the majority of the projects I did with LLM agents wouldn't have existed without them, because I would've never found enough time to work on them.

One of the latest things I made with Claude was a tool that allowed me to move a bunch of very low traffic Cloud Run services to a single VPS without losing any of the Cloud Run benefits such as easy Docker-based deployment and automatic certificate provisioning. I thought about making something like that for quite some time, and Claude finally made it possible, which makes me quite happy.

The fun thing here is that no other soul genuinely cares about it, or any other code I might publish. The code, especially AI generated, is so cheap that if anyone wants to repeat my steps to get rid of Cloud Run services, they will probably vibe-code their own tool instead of figuring out how to use mine, just like I did that instead of spending time on learning Dokku or similar solutions.

So, yes, 10x and more, but no one cares about the result, which makes the whole 10x measurement less useful.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#63

Post by slopinthebag »

philwelch wrote: post #57
slopinthebag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once we ditch our centrally controlled economies perhaps life can be affordable enough to not prevent willing parents from having children.

Life has never been more affordable than it is now. Virtually all of your ancestors were impoverished to a degree you can't even imagine.

Life was becoming increasingly more affordable, but that stopped being the case years ago. It is now declining. I would like it to either stay the same as it was years ago or start increasing again.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#64

Post by chickensong »

lp4v4n wrote: post #39
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.

I'm curious to check how faster AAA games will hit the market in the next years compared to the pre-LLM era. Or how much of the aging COBOL code base out there will disappear in the next decade. When concrete things like that start to happen, then I will start to believe in the 10x claim.

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 appetite for change and politics rather than development speed.

Aren't there some measurable things like github repo creation, PRs, app store additions, etc. that can be correlated to LLM adoption? Didn't Show HN have to get throttled after LLMs arrived?

Re: Mythical Man Month

#65

Post by TimTheTinker »

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.

AI is certainly able to increase coding speed, especially for experienced engineers who can design the analytical parts themselves (data structures, interfaces, invariants, and process), but in large projects and/or organizations, queuing theory (especially as understood by lean development practitioners like Don Reinertsen) is going to be nasty.

Lean development theory teaches us that in a multi-workstream, multi-stage development process, developers should be kept at roughly 65-75% utilization. Otherwise, contra-intuitively, work queue lengths increase exponentially the closer utilization gets to 100%. The reason is that slack in the system absorbs and smooths perturbations and variability, which are inevitable.

Furthermore, underutilization is also highly comparable to stock market options: their value increases as variability increases. Slack enables quick pivots with less advance notice. It builds continuous responsiveness into the system. And as the Agile Manifesto tells us, excellent software development is more characterized by the ability to respond to change than the mere ability to follow a plan. Customers appreciate responsiveness from software vendors; it builds trust, which is increasing in value all the more with the rise of AI.

But AI-driven development threatens to increase, not decrease individual engineer utilization. More is expected, more is possible, and frankly, once you learn how to guardrail the AI and give it no trust to design well analytically, the speed a senior engineer can achieve while writing great code with AI assistance often feels intoxicating.

I think we're going to go through a whole new spat of hard, counterintuitive lessons similar to those many 1960s and 70s developers like Fred Brooks and his IBM team learned the hard way.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#66

Post by wahnfrieden »

ventana wrote: post #62
hansvm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't yet seen anyone with a concrete example project (public ideally, but even describing private efforts in enough detail to enable potential criticism would be fine) making a claim as strong as 10x. Are you willing to break the mould and show us what we're all missing?

It's more like ∞x (or N/Ax if you prefer) because the majority of the projects I did with LLM agents wouldn't have existed without them, because I would've never found enough time to work on them. One of the latest things I made with Claude was a tool that allowed me to move a bunch of very low traffic Cloud Run services to a single VPS without losing any of the Cloud Run benefits such as easy Docker-based deployment…

The incredulity at 10x claims is often unearned because how much do these skeptics actually notice and appreciate the depth of work of ten developers collaborating on something (if not their own org)? Dev output slips by quietly. There are reams of unnoticed projects even at the scale of a life’s work.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#67

Post by XorNot »

massysett wrote: post #43
jdw64 wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Nine women can already have babies in parallel. That is, nine women cannot have a baby in one month, but nine women can have nine babies in nine months.

Moreover if you need 1 baby a month you can absolutely stagger your initial startup period to reliably produce 1 baby a month.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#68

Post by Capricorn2481 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #66
ventana wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like ∞x (or N/Ax if you prefer) because the majority of the projects I did with LLM agents wouldn't have existed without them, because I would've never found enough time to work on them. One of the latest things I made with Claude was a tool that allowed me to move a bunch of very low traffic Cloud Run services to a single VPS without losing any of the Cloud Run benefits such as easy Docker-based deployment…

The incredulity at 10x claims is often unearned because how much do these skeptics actually notice and appreciate the depth of work of ten developers collaborating on something (if not their own org)? Dev output slips by quietly. There are reams of unnoticed projects even at the scale of a life’s work.

This doesn't pass a sniff test at any small organization. And wouldn't these devs see this 10x claim themselves?

Re: Mythical Man Month

#69

Post by BlackFly »

jrumbut wrote: post #42
skydhash wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that has led to a 10X increase in the speed of software development . > AI is the silver bullet - my output is genuinely 10X what it was before claude code existed. Those are not the same. You can add 5 different features to a project and still provide less value that the 5 lines diff that resolves a performance bottleneck.

I agree with this sentiment but I think LLMs are really close to the Brooks idea of a silver bullet. I don't know if, overall, it's a 10x improvement or 6x or 14x but it's a serious contender. Part of it is the LLMs are very uneven in their performance across domains. If all I build is simple landing pages, it might be a 100x improvement. If I work on more complex, proprietary work where there aren't great examples i…

All available evidence points to it being an incremental improvement at best. Higher claims are attributable to the psychological effect of the AI sycophancy problem which erases the Dunning-Kruger effect and makes even experts extremely overconfident.

You still have to read the output of your LLM. Learning by reading alone and not doing is not nearly as effective.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#70

Post by Towaway69 »

chickensong wrote: post #64
lp4v4n wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to check how faster AAA games will hit the market in the next years compared to the pre-LLM era. Or how much of the aging COBOL code base out there will disappear in the next decade. When concrete things like that start to happen, then I will start to believe in the 10x claim.

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.

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