Somewhere in the last year, a bunch of us who hadn’t shipped real code in years quietly started shipping again. Not reviewing it. Not architecting it in a doc and handing it off. Actually building it. And loving it.
I lead software for a living. That means my days are meetings, roadmaps, hiring, unblocking people, and saying “no” a lot. The last time “writing code” was my actual job was a long time ago. I never stopped being able to code — I stopped having the time to code. At least in my day job. There’s a difference, and every engineering leader reading this feels it in their bones.
Great. The “why don’t you just…” idiots are “writing” code again and not reviewing it.
What could go wrong?
Who needs human review, the AI can do that? Who needs human coding, the AI can do that? Who needs human testing, the AI can do that? Who needs human requirements engineering, the AI can do that.
80% uptime. How did this happen?
Still five nines of uptime — 79.9999%.
Could you qualify what you mean by “idiots”? The author and the examples he gives - Kent Beck, David Heinemeier Hansson, and Garry Tan - are all very experienced software engineers.
By idiots I mean the people who haven’t engineered in years.
The subject of the article.
Seems self-evident.
Well that depends on how quickly you believe that engineering skills atrophy without use.
Though, I’d argue programming is like riding a bike. Even after a long break, it’s not difficult to get back into it, as the fundamentals for programming haven’t changed.