Post #751017

2026-03-19 21:12 UTC

As a programmer, I wish I could help people understand that the fastest part of any project is writing the code... Non-programmers always want to throw more code writers at a project to speed things up. The &quot;Mythical Man Month&quot; problem aside, the bottlenecks are all the legwork involved in defining the problem, the scope of this particular task, and fully testing it. Even before AI, writing code was fast and we already have a lot of tools to crank it out...if we&#39;re clear on *what* to crank out. This is prolly true in all fields, this difference in understanding between the people who actually work in a field, and the people who are adjacent to that field.

Replies (11)

@jeremiah@micro.glasshoundcomputing.com 2026-03-19 22:00

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io The only part of code writing that has historically not been fast for me is writing tests but that might be more a problem of knowing what to test and how to accurately capture that in an automated fashion versus the writing itself.

Open ##2881262
@pauricthelodger@mastodon.social 2026-03-19 22:09

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io "Measure twice, cut once" =)

Open ##2881265
@kelpana@mastodon.ie 2026-03-19 22:22

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io writing code with the so-called "AI" is probably slower TBQFH.

Open ##2881266
@isagalaev@mastodon.social 2026-03-19 22:51

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io what's absolutely *amazing* to me is when actual experienced programmers start singing songs about increased productivity and give examples like "C compiler in two weeks from scratch". They should know better, but it looks like there's something about those tools that captures them on a deep psychological level.

Open ##2881269
@tom@subdued.social 2026-03-20 00:04

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io Maurice Wilkes, an early computing pioneer, reflecting on the early days, said, "I remember the exact moment when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs." With AI-generated code, programmers give up the creative pleasure and joy of writing code, and multiply the amount of tedious and difficult debugging instead. What a bargain.

Open ##2881270
@fumanchu@fosstodon.org 2026-03-20 01:06

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io yes, and the REALLY hard part is making the design coherent, which tends to become harder after about 3 people working simultaneously. AI can never good cohere, it can only bad cohere.

Open ##2881272
@hannorein@mastodon.social 2026-03-20 02:49

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io it’s also the really fun part

Open ##2881273
@wesdym@mastodon.social 2026-03-20 03:43

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io Logically, nine women working together should be be able to produce a baby in just a month.

Open ##2881274
@PeterLudemann@mathstodon.xyz 2026-03-20 06:07

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io Probably true for the majority of software, that the biggest problem is figuring what the problem is (business rules, use cases, UX, etc) But some problems are mostly about the code ... compilers, databases, webservers, browsers, operating systems, paxos/raft, end-to-end cryptography, etc, etc.

Open ##2881275
@Jage@mas.to 2026-03-20 21:41

@ChanceyFleet@mas.to @codebyjeff@hachyderm.io I feel this. Even working with AI coding, I find that at least half or more of my time is spent planning, testing, etc.

Open ##2881276
@clolsonus@social.makerforums.info 2026-04-04 21:18

@codebyjeff@hachyderm.io I am a software guy that works with a bunch of friken engineers. They all know how to build physical stuffs and know all the right things about defining the problem before picking the solution ... until it comes to software and then they forget everything. The solution magics it's way into existing somehow ... the solution that they are picturing (and not close to fully describing) will flow easily. And bonus, it will be easy because I'll be using the tool they already picked out for me to do the development with (that I've never seen before, but the youtube videos talk about how you can build all kinds of cool stuff with zero coding) and it should probably take about a week or two. We are an achievement based organization so ... results ... now!

Open ##2881277