alt Hacker NewsI feel like I'm going crazy with all the people questioning the impact of AI in software development.
I think people already have forgotten how long and arduous software development was just a few years ago.
The biggest bottleneck now is CI/CD/Experimentation with respect to engineering, and product alignment with respect to the business.
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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.
> 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
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.