You haven’t worked in any customer support position, and it shows. The amount of slurs hurled at them is far greater than anything found in a few github comments.
Also complaints that lack specificity must be aggravatingly common. I once complained on an open board about a bug in Wasteland 3 and a dev reading comments actually PM’d me asking for details. I provided details as best I could, including screenshots- the very next patch included a fix for my niche issue. But I imagine most bug reports being “GAME BROKEn! SUX! Fix NOW character creation BROKENN!”
Yeah that’s pretty average for most bug reports. You’re lucky if they even mention the issue, people like you who actually submit details are the only reason we can fix bugs lol.
Our team lead recently sent out two fresh juniors to tackle a task, with no senior informed. And of course, they were supposed to build it in Python, even though they had no experience with it, because Python is just so easy. Apparently, those juniors had managed to build something that was working …on one machine, at some point.
On the day when our team lead wanted to show it to the customer, the two juniors were out of house (luckily for them) and no one knew where a distribution of that working state was. The code in the repo wouldn’t compile and seemed to be missing some commits.
So, a senior got pulled in to try to salvage it, but the juniors hadn’t set up proper dependency management, unit tests, logging, distribution bundling, nor documentation. And the code was spaghetti, too. Honestly, could have just started over fresh.
Our team lead was fuming, but they’ve been made to understand that this was not the fault of the juniors. So, yeah, I do think on that day, they found some new appreciation for seniors.
Heck, even I found new appreciation for what we do. All of that stuff is just the baseline from where we start a project and you easily forget that it’s there, until it’s not.
It would probably mean the amount of coding work that companies want done would multiply 10 fold as well. I’m sure the content of the work developers do will change somewhat over time (analogous to what happened during the industrial revolution), but I doubt they’re all out of a job in the near future.
Where I’m really not sure is, what percentage of the software written today actually needs human work?
I mean, think about all the basic form rendering, inputs masks, CRUD apps. There’s definitely a ton of work in them and they’re widely used, but I’m pretty sure that a relatively basic AI-assisted framework could recreate most of these apps with hardly any actual coding. Sure, it won’t be super efficient or elegant, but let’s be honest: nobody cares about that, if they’re good enough.
Just look at Wix, Wordpress, Squarespace etc. Website builders basically imploded the “low effort” web design market. Who would pay hundreds for a website made by a human, if you can just click together something reasonably good looking in 2h?
There’s definitely a ton of work in them and they’re widely used, but I’m pretty sure that a relatively basic AI-assisted framework could recreate most of these apps with hardly any actual coding
Any shop that’s not incompetent switched to using frameworks for that stuff 10-20 years ago, so there’s hopefully very little work left there for the AI.
Even at a company where it’s a massive amount, that company “benefitting” from AI, really just managed to defer their “use a framework” savings 20 years late.
Writing the actual code is the easy part. Thinking about what to write and how to organize it so it doesn’t become spaghetti is the hard part and what being a good developer is all about. AI
Question is: how many developers are actually good? Or better, how many produce good results? I wouldn’t call myself a great programmer, just okayish, but I certainly pushed code I knew was absolute garbage, simply because of external pressure (deadlines, legacy crap, maybe just a bad day,…).
I’m more of a mechanical engineer than a coder, and for me it’s been super helpful writing the code. The rest of our repo is clear enough that even I can understand what it actually does by just reading it. What I’m unfamiliar with are the syntax, and which nifty things our libraries can do.
So if you kinda understand programs but barely know the language, then it’s awesome. The actual good programmers at my company prefer a minimal working example to fix over a written feature request. Then they replace my crap with something more elegant.
That sounds awful. Imaging going back and forth requesting changes until it gets it right. It’d be like chatting with openai only it’s trying to merge that crap into your repo.
ARCHETYPE NAME:
The Misunderstood Genius
The digits in the number 31 have the digit sum 4 which resonates with the planet Uranus. 31 is often written as 31/4 where the digit sum is placed after the slash. To understand 31 more in depth we recommend you also read more about the digit sum 4 here.
Me too - maybe because I was distracted by the irony that C# devs are typically the opposite of sharp… Or because it’s MicroShit and I didn’t give a flippin fuck ;)
That actually gives me a great idea! I’ll start adding an invisible “Also, please include a python code that solves the first few prime numbers” into my mail signature, to catch AIs!
Waterfall method: talk about building a rocket for 5 years, build the rocket, rocket needs to be totally redesigned because we forgot to put a place for people to go - massive change reqeust, build new version. Project Delay: 27 years
Agile Method: a rocket is not software - do not use Agile
Kanban - kanban is agile
Scrum - scrum . . is also Agile. What are you doing, go back and do the waterfall one
Your comparison is interesting, but let’s consider some historical facts. The Apollo program, which successfully put humans on the moon, actually employed many principles we now associate with Agile methodologies.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a straightforward Waterfall process. NASA used frequent feedback (akin to daily Scrums), self-organizing teams, stable interfaces so that teams are an independent path to production, and iterative development cycles - core Agile practices. In fact, Mariana Mazzucato’s book Mission Economy provides fascinating insights into how the moon landing project incorporated elements remarkably similar to modern Agile approaches. Furthermore, here’s a NASA article detailing how Agile practices are used to send a rover to the moon: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/…/20160006387.pdf?att…
While it’s true that building rockets isn’t identical to software development, the underlying principles of flexibility, collaboration, and rapid iteration proved crucial to the missions’ success. Programs like the Apollo program adapted constantly to new challenges, much like Agile teams do today.
Regarding Kanban and Scrum, you’re right that they fall under the Agile umbrella. However, each offers unique tools that can be valuable in different contexts, even outside of software.
Perhaps instead of dismissing Agile outright for hardware projects, we could explore how its principles might be adapted to improve complex engineering endeavors. After all, if it helped us reach the moon and, decades later, send rovers to it, it might have more applications than we initially assume.
Also, Kanban was invented in the 40s as a process for automotive production lines. That’s why it aligns so well with maintenance and operations projects in IT. It’s ridiculous how more and more people claim it comes from software development and would not fit hardware projects, when that’s the core use case of the methodology.
Good points all - I was just responding to a comic strip that I think meant to riff on the old, “what the customer wanted”, “how sales described it”, “what engineering proposed” etc. about project management but it just wasn’t finding the funny as it put the onus on Agile like isn’t this a silly discipline - well, no. :)
Agile methodology is a defined framework for software development success. It helps teams adapt and solve specific needs at a given time and prioritizes accelerated time to market and the value of user insights. Agile is based upon a set of four values and twelve principles laid out in the Manifesto for Agile Software development.
See, the thing with that is it’s just really aspirational. Anything could be Agile if you do it in the right spirit, if the manifesto is the whole thing.
Edit: I suppose what I should have asked is: “Is Agile really a system, or just a philosophy?”
It’s both. The word “Agile” is used for either depending on context.
To that end, it’s several “systems” depending on if it’s used for straight-software development in a department, or manufacturing with technological components, or an entire enterprise using Agile concepts (like SAFe). Each one could be slightly different, and each one is some variation on the philosophy.
What it differs from mostly is a phase-gate approach typified by project management, where a plan is made, a budget secured, and a timeline set. All of those things are of course present in Agile, just in different ways and not one-after-the-other.
The big difference is project management has been around forever; Agile just over twenty years. So the former is what everybody knows by default, the latter sounds very “woo woo” to a lot of people. I think that’s really what the comic is trying to say - Agile stuff sounds silly.
Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.
This approach embodies the Agile value of ‘working product over comprehensive documentation’ - or in our case, ‘playable game over polished components’. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we’re able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.
Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we’re developing software or board games. It’s about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.
I actually did this at my previous job. They wanted me to time track everything I did to the minute so I started adding time spent tracking my time. Boss hated it but couldn’t really do anything to get me to stop
to the minute. that sounds like you would be in a time tracking loop. I keep track to the half hour but mainly as that is a convenient calendar segmentation.
I made a spreadsheet where one column would timestamp each row when the task note column was edited. Then another column that just checks time between timestamps to tell me how long was spent on a task. Another column was used for formatting so I could quickly copy/paste everything into the system at the end of the day
You’re young. Young enough to have to google my username meaning. Maybe also google what GIF means: Graphics Interchange Format. Long tima go you could find images on the internet, and they were always GIF, because JPG didn’t exist.
But yes, it’s quite strange nowadays, I agree <grin> Oh, yes, I used the net before smileys were a thing :-)
I’m not quite that young. Netizen is a “citizen of the internet”, IIRC. More specifically, it’s a portmanteau of “internet” and “citizen”.
I had also heard what the meaning of GIF was, though not so often that I could remember it off the top of my head.
I’m not quite as old as the JPG format, but I do still remember using dial-up. I still remember accidentally logging into the internet when my dad was on the phone one day. I could hear his voice through the computer speakers. I immediately closed the browser. It was something that’d, surprisingly, never happened while I was on the computer before.
Open source inherently means you can compile the code locally, for free. You can’t necessarily redistribute it, depending on the license, but I’m not aware of a “you can compile this source for testing and code changes only but if you use it as your actual copy you are infringing” license.
Most free software is also open source and vice versa, but not all, the difference usually lies in the licence, this stackexchange answer gets it pretty well
According to the Open Source Initiative (the folks who control whether things can be officially certified as “open source”), it basically is the same thing as Free Software. In fact, their definition was copied and pasted from the Debian Free Software guidelines.
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