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Mythical Man Month

martinfowler.com

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Re: Mythical Man Month

#81

Post by stephbook »

corndoge wrote: post #79
coldstartops wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a public project. https://github.com/KeibiSoft/KeibiDrop It took me 2 years ago around 2k hours to build a cross platform FUSE vault, without using AI assisted tools. The pain was debugging through logs and system traces. And understanding how things work. Now managed to ship this one much faster, as an after hours project. Started it in may 2025, and around end of November 2025 started using claude on it. Ju…

Yep, the real strength of AI is less in replacing engineering skills, it's more in slashing all the time we spend not using those skills and doing low level research and data correlation tasks instead. Which isn't to say that those tasks aren't valuable in their own way, but in terms of raw output...

I long for the day when they will supervise CI/CD systems.

Trying to fix syntax errors in strong interpolation on a 5-minute-delay loop is hell.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#82

Post by aryehof »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #76
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.

You’re describing output while the essay is discussing productivity. If you’re 10x more productive, someone is willing to pay you 10x as much as they were last year, because you’re producing 10x as much value as before. Has your salary increased 10x?

Salary stays the same. A bunch of others are fired. You’re expected to produce their level of output as well as your own. After all, you’re 10x more productive now?

Re: Mythical Man Month

#83

Post by coldstartops »

corndoge wrote: post #79
coldstartops wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a public project. https://github.com/KeibiSoft/KeibiDrop It took me 2 years ago around 2k hours to build a cross platform FUSE vault, without using AI assisted tools. The pain was debugging through logs and system traces. And understanding how things work. Now managed to ship this one much faster, as an after hours project. Started it in may 2025, and around end of November 2025 started using claude on it. Ju…

Yep, the real strength of AI is less in replacing engineering skills, it's more in slashing all the time we spend not using those skills and doing low level research and data correlation tasks instead. Which isn't to say that those tasks aren't valuable in their own way, but in terms of raw output...

I treat the low level tasks as building blocks. You need a grasp and understanding of what is possible with them, but you do not need to remember the exact byte order and syntax. I think the idea is you should structure your workflow in a deterministic way, and just use Claude/ LLM as the interface. It is much easier and enjoyable to use high level language, where you give pointers to building blocks/ directions/ say hard no when you understand things deviate.

If I had to output the code myself, would take around 8 hours of constant writing to get around 1k LoC of code. For FUSE level tricky stuff, I might need to spend 3 weeks for 10 LoC. Very easy to burnout and build pain.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#84

Post by coldstartops »

stephbook wrote: post #81
corndoge wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the real strength of AI is less in replacing engineering skills, it's more in slashing all the time we spend not using those skills and doing low level research and data correlation tasks instead. Which isn't to say that those tasks aren't valuable in their own way, but in terms of raw output...

I long for the day when they will supervise CI/CD systems. Trying to fix syntax errors in strong interpolation on a 5-minute-delay loop is hell.

It is possible. I tell to use cli app, and for the agent to ad timer and check the status once in a while. Especially if there is something with a long wait. Also if it can run some validators/ same tools locally, would be much faster.

Might tend to deviate and waste time, needs guiding once in a while, and to check what is it spewing out, point it in the correct direction.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#85

Post by gabriel-uribe »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #76
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.

You’re describing output while the essay is discussing productivity. If you’re 10x more productive, someone is willing to pay you 10x as much as they were last year, because you’re producing 10x as much value as before. Has your salary increased 10x?

Salary has had weak correlation to productivity gains since last century.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#87

Post by eitland »

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?

My friend who has never taken a programming class (or even touched an IDE before AFAIK) has now put a small app into production.

Complete frontend + backend + database.

Yes, it is an internal app, but it works and everyone loves it.

Does that count as an example?

(Also I absolutely expect him to need help at some point, but so far it has taken his project from absolutely impossible to 3 weeks of work in between work, renovating his house and being a dad for the first time so I was very impressed.)

Re: Mythical Man Month

#88

Post by cyanydeez »

rafaelmn wrote: post #80
nemo1618 wrote: post #46

It's interesting to revisit Brooks' "surgical team" in light of AI. For example, I frequently have Claude act as a "toolsmith", creating bespoke project-specific tools on the fly, which are then documented in Skills that Claude can use going forward. What has changed is that a) One person (or rather, one person-AI hybrid) plays all the roles within the surgical team, and b) Internal frictions such as cost, developmen…

How well does that work for you ? It's annoyingly inconsistent for me - I give it instructions on how to fetch JIRA ticket with a script that renders everything relevant to a .md and half of the time it will still default to reading it via ACLI. I have instructions on how to do a full build with warnaserror before commit but I still get pipeline errors regularly because it will skip the noincremental part, etc.

On a local model, with open code, when I wrote a specific javascript way to run sql queries because bash and psql were error prone, what I did was when I saw it make a mistake, I told it in passive agressive tones something like: "please edit AGENTS.md to detail how to use the query.js tool to run a query and to never use psql"; I did this two times until it stopped wanting to use psql.

It seems like if you write the docs yourself that's not leveraging the probability that the model itself knows the anti-context guard rail that best prevents it from grabbing its average tool use.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#89

Post by cyanydeez »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #68
wahnfrieden wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm assuming the devs are seeing 10x code generation and equating that to the improvement.

It's when they practically ignore the rabbit holes where it's suspect. I'm definitely seeing speed ups. I troubleshot a linux system yesterday with minimal effort using a local llm. It likely would have taken me a few hours to locate all the docs & testing procedures. the llm did it with only a few prompts. To ensure it did it correctly, I had to interrogate it a few times before letting it proceed.

Humans make really bad scientists, and it takes a lot of effort to properly catalog and provide statistics for these things.

There is an improvement, but I doubt any random dev can give a real estimate since before LLMs they couldnt really give you a real estimate anyway. I do know when I encounter a bug now, debugging is almost immediately possible.

Re: Mythical Man Month

#90

Post by boron1006 »

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.

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.

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