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I can see how this trend is going to go. Manager: “Why isn’t feature X available?” Person B: “key pieces are delayed due to the developer not understanding al
by Frost1x 20d ago
I can see how this trend is going to go.
Manager: “Why isn’t feature X available?”
Person B: “key pieces are delayed due to the developer not understanding all of the LLM doesn’t and implementation.”
Manager: “does it work? What are the risks?”
Person B: “well yes it works for now but we’re accumulating tech debt due to a lack of understanding and potential flaws that haven’t been thought out yet”
Manager: “they want feature X, ship it, we can deal with it later, I don’t care if it’s not coherent as long as it works.”
How many decades at this point has these been a push for functionality over everything at all costs? And you have a mechanical snow plow now. Most businesses don’t care about later risk or any future planning beyond the quarter horizon, they’re not concerned about how it will effect their performance in 3 quarters or lead to instability or issues, those are future problems for a future person and we’re here for money now.
- AdieuToLogic 20d agoThe simulated dialog you have provided is very much representative of what many of us have heard first-hand. However, I disagree with: Most businesses don’t care about later risk or any future planning beyond the quarter horizon, they’re not concerned about how it will effect their performance in 3 quarters or lead to instability or issues, those are future problems for a future person and we’re here for money now. Businesses care about "later risk" and what it implies. Individuals within an organization do not unless it will specifically affect their bonuses/promotions.
- gmadsen 20d agoIt is also true developers can have a myopic view of what should be valued and that can be incongruent with the business. You can make a perfectly rational business choice to take on tech debt to get a feature sooner.
- 0hmygauss 20d agoIMO this is exactly how software business operates in practice. Immaculate codebases we can effortlessly extended are a fairy tale of consultants. The world runs on tech debt that doesn’t matter enough to fix.
- 0hmygauss 20d agoAnother way to say this is that this has worked fine for decades— ie, software businesses have done just fine prioritizing features over code cathedrals. What I find more surprising is that many engineers still can’t seem to accept this basic fact, after decades. I suspect AI will actually change this. The opportunity presented to business in dramatically relaxing both our understanding of our codebases and our tastes and preferences is big enough to justify letting go of folks who don’t get it.