alt Hacker News> Code was very rarely the bottleneck in the first place.
I disagree. Kinda
What AI has made much simpler is that you don't have to waste time checking docs and have the best autocomplete system by a long shot - this was a bottleneck unless you were doing Java or some other language with "perfect" AC
What AI made "kinda easier": solving for usual problems. The stuff you would search Stack Overflow, or think a couple of minutes for an optimized solution - not a bottleneck but not 100% smooth neither
You still have to test and validate your code. AI made this easier-ish but this is still where I see manual work being needed (even if you are automating tests - you still have to think on what you want the code to do)
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This just says that we can output code faster. I'm saying that the rate at which we output code wasn't the thing that was slowing down development. We've always been able to increase that even without AI by adjusting the working environment and removing obstacles to programming.
In larger organizations, quite often it's the business that is holding back development. They can only handle so much change and speed needs direction to be velocity. Drafting requirements is generally much slower than implementing them.
Like the number one complaint from programmers has been that they don't get to do programming. They want to write code, not update jiras or spend hours in meetings.
I disagree. Coordinating 100 folks to align on a problems statement with "agile" and sprints was always the biggest bottleneck. Difference in opinion, internal politics is always a bottleneck.
I think now, code is the bottleneck. Just because you can generate million lines of code, people with different skill level think they are accomplishing the task, testing, merge conflicts, trust has become the bottleneck.