> I think people already have forgotten how long and arduous software development was just a few years ago.

Was it? Behind any arduous development process, I'm ready to bet there's a very inefficient communication channel that has nothing to do with code or any technical matters, but still impact productivity. Think how hard it is to get a Definition of Done alongside the Change Request even in the business jargon.

> The biggest bottleneck now is CI/CD/Experimentation with respect to engineering, and product alignment with respect to the business.

It's like building crooked houses, then saying that the biggest bottleneck is inspection. Do a 5 why[0] around the "bottleneck" and the answer is likely not there at all

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

> I'm ready to bet there's a very inefficient communication channel that has nothing to do with code

That is what I'm saying though. Shipping to production is mostly bottlenecked by product/business leaders who haven't described a clear vision/communication of what is wanted.

I've been a SWE for far longer pre coding-agents than post. The actual development of software was arduous. So much of tech was/is a long list of heavily scoped down tasks that eng takes an order of magnitude longer than today.

A quirk of coding agents is how they assess timelines. Ask it to scope a project you want done and it will answer in engineer days from pre-ai days. In actuality it can be done with a prompt and a few hours in claude

> So much of tech was/is a long list of heavily scoped down tasks that eng takes an order of magnitude longer than today.

I disagree. Based on my personal experience, a lot of time is spent on fine tuning code and double checking the docs. The first pass can be very quick especially if you already have sample code (from the docs or other parts of the project). But when it came to fine tune, that's where the other 90% of the time is going.

A lot of daily activities of engineering is massaging code, either from bug reports or requests after someone tested the features. And a lot of time is spent gathering details, comparing it with what already built, and then apply correction.

From what I've seen with people doing agentic coding, that feedback loop in the development phase is very superficial. Then the most important feedback loop (the one with the user) is distorted as the software is constantly changing.

[delayed]

Same. If we had twice as many PMs as our current number (we have multiple open seats) we’d be easily able to do way more with the same eng team.

Not everyone has the process and positioning needed to take advantage of AI, so it’s not surprising that some people swear it doesn’t help. But those people need to understand that other people do have the process and positioning and AI is dramatically changing things.

Personally, we’re just beginning to ship faster because we’re a big ship and turn slowly. We’re still getting up to speed but we’re also bogged down with bug fixes, security fixes, and the review bottleneck. Reviews are especially tough now that every commit is much larger because it is now much more correct than the crap we were submitting before AI.

Also, many people are simply lying and hate AI. There are people I’ve encountered who look for any evidence to justify not embracing it. It’s frankly tiring but I understand some people cannot handle change and are frankly terrified of what is happening to their careers and their concept of self-worth.

I’m not sure I’ve really seen it within the community of programmers. It was certainly more there early on when the models were much worse, but I’ve seen it fading.

I have seen it among “the general public“. I’ve seen normal people complain about things in open-source projects or other contexts where to whatever degree they accepted programming took time before now they think it’s all just a magic wand with Claude, no matter the level of complexity.

I haven’t heard a single person at my company in management at any layer complain that we’re not working fast enough now that we have AI. One of my friends has 100% told me their management is pulling that. The management over there is on the everyone should do four times as many tickets, and use at least X amount of tokens per day. otherwise you’re slacking off train.

It’s all in who you talk to.

I think it's an age thing as well.

Engineers that have only started full time work post 2023 haven't experienced the counterfactual of not having AI.

They see all the mundane business/eng bottlenecks that are pervasive now and don't truly know how much better it is now than before

[delayed]

That’s not the case at my company at all. It’s available to use but they’re not forcing it or firing people who aren’t using it. It’s just a tool we can use.

If you follow various data sources like the StackOverflow developer survey or DORA from 2023 onwards, by this theory about 77% - 90% have been fired or pushed out of the industry.

What do you mean software development was arduous? It was pretty chill. You will start working on something, start crafting code carefully with time to review, optimize, etc.

Now it feels like everyone is in a rush and there is no time for crafting anything. Just vibe code a pile of shit that looks good but it's unnecessarily complex.

You are going to see how arduous software development is in a few years when no one understands the systems they have built