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What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

margaretstorey.com

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Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#81

Post by flemhans »

alexmuresan wrote: post #79

The post makes some good points. As a programmer I love writing code. I know coding is just a tool but I enjoy the act of thinking about a problem, finding a solution and implementing it. It gives me a little dopamine boost. Ever since LLMs started writing decent code, I started feeling like a part of that joy of code-writing has been taken away. Using LLMs literally leaves a developer to do (what I find is) the wors…

I see it the other way, I can do whatever creative and fun stuff I like, and the agent does the boring debugging or finishing up my loose ends.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#82

Post by mikestaas »

onion2k wrote: post #65
platzhirsch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because waterfall software engineering has been so successful, right? ;-)

Lots of very successful software was built using a waterfall approach. It's a methodology that works well if you know precisely what the end result needs to be. That doesn't make it appropriate for everything - if you don't know what the customer needs, or if you want to get an MVP out, then Agile works better, but you shouldn't dismiss an approach because it doesn't work everywhere. Plus, 'agile' in quite a lot comp…

Agilefall, the worst of both worlds.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#83

Post by adamddev1 »

alexmuresan wrote: post #79

The post makes some good points. As a programmer I love writing code. I know coding is just a tool but I enjoy the act of thinking about a problem, finding a solution and implementing it. It gives me a little dopamine boost. Ever since LLMs started writing decent code, I started feeling like a part of that joy of code-writing has been taken away. Using LLMs literally leaves a developer to do (what I find is) the wors…

> I am under the impression that I can’t “take my time” to think about a problem anymore. It almost feels wasteful now. I have to “just do it”.

This exactly, has been the problem in cultures that have produced broken, lower quality things in general. Don't think deeply about the problem and don't think about the long term consequences. Just grab whatever solution gives some immediate solution the fastest. "Jugaar."

Many people are slipping into this culture now with the new pressure for immediate production pushed by the AI crowd. It's "jugaar." It's trading short term gain for long term breakage, chaos, and pain. It's also social and economic pressure to not do things properly.

Those who want to take the time time to really understand things, or to build things correctly are mocked or punished for being slow and simple minded. "Just do it this way, look everyone is doing it and making more money faster!" This is also part of that culture that drags everyone into jugaar.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#84

Post by s-lambert »

marcosdumay wrote: post #42
saulpw wrote: post #36

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.

It used to fail once after a long time, now software fails a lot every 2 weeks.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#85

Post by yuye »

alexmuresan wrote: post #79

The post makes some good points. As a programmer I love writing code. I know coding is just a tool but I enjoy the act of thinking about a problem, finding a solution and implementing it. It gives me a little dopamine boost. Ever since LLMs started writing decent code, I started feeling like a part of that joy of code-writing has been taken away. Using LLMs literally leaves a developer to do (what I find is) the wors…

>Ever since LLMs started writing decent code, I started feeling like a part of that joy of code-writing has been taken away.

The SWEs that go all-in on AI will never understand this, because they have never enjoyed the joy of code-writing. I would even go as far as saying that many of them even hate it.

Of this group, I think the majority are the same people that have joined the industry not because of an innate love for engineering, but because they saw an opportunity to make big bucks in big tech.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#86

Post by sevenzero »

Turskarama wrote: post #74
scorpioxy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that it has been extremely successful? And when you say doesn't fail anymore, do you mean it doesn't go over budget and/or changes scope?

Agile cannot go over budget or scope because those are failures of planning. Agile is the methodology that was developed specifically to counteract those problems with planning. Projects that use Agile can go over budget and scope but they never do that because they are using Agile, rather they use Agile because they might do that.

It always felt like Agile is the lazy attempt of people unwilling to learn what it takes to build software, to make it more predictable. Unfortunately project planning methods that work for buildings are not really great for software. It's just corpo stuff project managers do to feel meaningful.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#88

Post by yuye »

01100011 wrote: post #11

These sorts of articles just seem silly to me. Use AI where it helps you and avoid where it doesn't. That dividing line may change week to week. I think it's great for writing tests and sanity checking changes but wouldn't let it write core driver code(I'm a systems programmer so YMMV). Maybe in a month I'll think differently.

>Use AI where it helps you and avoid where it doesn't

When all you've got is a hammer...

...you'll eventually stop knowing how to use other tools.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#89

Post by faangguyindia »

I may get downvoted for this but

I don't agree that demand for software guys will drop.

What I think is, demand for software people will go up while wages will be suppressed. And more software will be in the market as a whole.

There are so many craftsmen in market who hardly make liveable wage, select few make a bank! Same pattern will repeat in software.

Mass market software with large-scale adoption will drop. And specialised tools and services will take its place.

Which means 1000s of calorie trackers, 1000s of image editors, etc... but as scale will drop, income and revenue of companies will also drop.

Software wages are an anomaly in select countries; I always believe software wages shouldn't be more than a plumber or mechanic.

Re: What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

#90

Post by philipswood »

marcosdumay wrote: post #42
saulpw wrote: post #36

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.

Waterfall was also extremely successful.

People who failed just did it wrong. /s

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