alt Hacker News> 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
> 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