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I've noticed a similar trend in my current organization. In the beginning, when we were smaller, the details mattered. Things couldn't be slow, animations had t

I've noticed a similar trend in my current organization. In the beginning, when we were smaller, the details mattered. Things couldn't be slow, animations had to be smooth, scrolling speed mattered, loading times mattered. We aimed to build the most efficient product, anything to increase user efficiency. Then as the team grew, the values changed to favor anything that improved developer efficiency. More abstractions, more layers, more frameworks. The tradeoff of saving one day of developer work was worth the cost of millions of user seconds collectively. I think the difference was just the visibility - management can see the costs of things on the development side, but they can't see the benefits of a slightly faster launch time, or better caching, or smoother scrolling. They aren't measurable, and once an org gets to the point where all it cares about are measurable numbers, I think this is a natural course.

ojosilva 3y ago
Now just wait for the deplorable impact of LLM on code quality and performance in the years ahead. There's a new wave of programmers who are "GPT whisperers" and spend most of their time hooked to a chatbot (sometimes right in their IDE) that programs for them. Of course, that's until AI gets to the point where it can fix everything we (or it) programmed wrong, including AI itself which is highly inefficient just like the OP predicts.
- danenania 3y ago
  I don't think it's a given that LLM-driven coding is a negative for code quality and performance. In my experience coding with ChatGPT, it often reminds me to think about error handling, edge cases, and performance issues. It also over-prioritizes readability if anything, using descriptive variable names and documenting every line with a comment. It's maybe not as good as the best engineers at considering all these factors, but I'd say it's better than the average developer, and may be better than the best engineer too when that engineer is tired and in a hurry.
toyg 3y ago
It's not just about being measurable, it's about being profitable. Capitalism results in efficient production, not efficient products, because it's only interested in extracting profit from the production system. Cars were optimised only after external (oil) shocks were applied, and even then very unevenly (American cars continue to be very inefficient). In fact, inefficient products are often more profitable in practice, as customers have to replace them more often; the crappy iPhone cable that splits after a year means Apple can charge you again (and again) for its replacement. White goods now break more often, but they're built more cheaply so they can make per-unit profit higher than it would otherwise be. What matters is efficiency producing, not after-sale use. Capitalism in software means churning out new automation as quickly as possible, letting consumers pick up the resulting waste of energy and time. The production chain gets more and more standardized and optimized: you can now swap React developers, or Kubernetes admins, like you can swap warehouse workers, with all that it entails in terms of salary pressure. Some of that automation is effectively self-justifying, in the same way accountants make accountancy terms obscure so they can justify their jobs; but that's about it. Everything else is about profit.

ojosilva 3y ago

Now just wait for the deplorable impact of LLM on code quality and performance in the years ahead. There's a new wave of programmers who are "GPT whisperers" and spend most of their time hooked to a chatbot (sometimes right in their IDE) that programs for them. Of course, that's until AI gets to the point where it can fix everything we (or it) programmed wrong, including AI itself which is highly inefficient just like the OP predicts.

danenania 3y ago
I don't think it's a given that LLM-driven coding is a negative for code quality and performance. In my experience coding with ChatGPT, it often reminds me to think about error handling, edge cases, and performance issues. It also over-prioritizes readability if anything, using descriptive variable names and documenting every line with a comment. It's maybe not as good as the best engineers at considering all these factors, but I'd say it's better than the average developer, and may be better than the best engineer too when that engineer is tired and in a hurry.

toyg 3y ago

It's not just about being measurable, it's about being profitable. Capitalism results in efficient production, not efficient products, because it's only interested in extracting profit from the production system. Cars were optimised only after external (oil) shocks were applied, and even then very unevenly (American cars continue to be very inefficient). In fact, inefficient products are often more profitable in practice, as customers have to replace them more often; the crappy iPhone cable that splits after a year means Apple can charge you again (and again) for its replacement. White goods now break more often, but they're built more cheaply so they can make per-unit profit higher than it would otherwise be. What matters is efficiency producing, not after-sale use. Capitalism in software means churning out new automation as quickly as possible, letting consumers pick up the resulting waste of energy and time. The production chain gets more and more standardized and optimized: you can now swap React developers, or Kubernetes admins, like you can swap warehouse workers, with all that it entails in terms of salary pressure. Some of that automation is effectively self-justifying, in the same way accountants make accountancy terms obscure so they can justify their jobs; but that's about it. Everything else is about profit.