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andrewstuart • today at 4:31 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

>> coding was never the bottleneck

What utter twaddle.

I’m old enough to remember pre AI programming and it very very much was the bottleneck.

Replies

nathanfries • today at 4:34 PM

I think it was indeed the bottleneck, however the assumption that "coding is the bottleneck" was baked into how organizations were measured, optimized, staffed for the last couple of decades.

skydhash • today at 4:45 PM

From "The Mythical Man-month" (1995 ed)

  For some years I have been successfully using the following rule of thumb for scheduling a software task:
    l/3 planning
    l/6 coding
    l/4 component test and early system test
    l/4 system test, all components in hand.
The separation can be blurred if you follow an iterative approach (also explained in the book), but it aligned roughly with my experience. And whenever I helped a colleague in the past, coding was not the problem. It was either the lack of planning (no data modelling, no rough algorithm design), or no test setup (trial and error coding). It was never the coding part. Syntax errors is trivial to solve (with any good editor) and most libraries have good reference docs (not learning the library is an orthogonal matter).
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ido • today at 4:32 PM

> old enough to remember pre AI programming

So old enough the remember the ancient times back in 2023?