I'm truly hopeful that AI will open a new of prototyping. Back in the day, prototyping was how you figured out what to build, you'd very deliberately toss the entire first (or second!) version, and you'd plan to do that.
High quality ensued. Usually ;)
Most places I've worked, devs were basically afraid to prototype
Either you would get chastised for wasting time with prototypes, or worse, your prototype would end up in production
I think the software industry really needs a cultural reset to embrace slower and deliberate development to build quality, but unfortunately AI has us racing recklessly in the wrong direction
I am so tired of it. Are there any companies out there that actually give devs time to build quality software anymore? I'm so burned out of the "move fast and break everything" grind
I understand both sides.
Quality must come from engineering. If you’re depending on a product manager to ask you that you can improve the quality of the code, you already lost.
So it requires soft skills, proper framing and ability to iterate quickly on quality-related tasks without leaving junk and multiple-versions behind.
But I completely understand push back for “doing improvements developers want to do”: A lot of developers confuse quality with familiarity or even complexity/verbosity. So business people have a reason to be reluctant.
And as an engineering manager I also had to push back several times. The thing that makes money is not the place to learn new skills, for example.
Ask on sprint planning if time can be set aside to spike out a proof of concept, and then you go do that prototyping in the sprint.
Has this (for me, normal) process really been that arduous in your past jobs? It's a slam dunk to leadership, as we do this to corral time wasted.
All these companies want devs with top-engineering talent and coding skill, but then fire them because they aren't using LLMs enough.