Do you know that funny moment when someone talks about a topic and tries to sound smart, but you actually know more about whatever they’re talking about?
I usually get this feeling when talking to consultants or people in similar fields when they start talking about software development. I think they literally are the embodiment of fake it until you make it. Maybe after reading the following article by McKinsey, you’ll know what I mean.
On my blog, you’ve probably noticed how I outline my workflow to help you become the most productive developer you can be.
The truth is, however, that technical factors play a much smaller role in our productivity than we’d like to admit.
In the paper What Predicts Software Developers’ Productivity?, a wide range of influences on developer productivity are examined.And as it turns out, the top factors are:
A notable outcome of the ranking is that the top 10 productivity factors are non-technical
After learning how AI and LLMs are built, after calculating backpropagation over several pages by hand, I still didn’t fully understand how they work or why we are doing things the way we are.
I just followed my university courses blindly, without actually asking myself what each step in a neural network is doing.
Then came a book I recently read: A Brief History of Intelligence: Why the Evolution of the Brain Holds the Key to the Future of AI by Max Bennett.
I’m a full-time software engineer, but writing code is only a part of what I do. Much of my time is spent thinking through problems, planning solutions, collaborating with teammates, and doing research. So when it finally comes time to write code, I need to make the most of every minute. That’s why I focus heavily on optimizing my workflow: to turn ideas into working code as efficiently as possible.
LLMs take over programming. So that’s it ? Years of experience, degrees and certificates are now worthless ? According to non-programmers that is in fact the case.
Experienced developers know the shortcomings though. The more experienced they are, the less stressed they are about it. As outlined in my last Post even the GitHub CEO states that programmers are not going anywhere.
But why is every company pushing AI so much ? Does it make us more efficient ?
AI, probably the buzzword of the last few years, is at the forefront, for better or worse. Big tech wants us to believe that using their LLMs and coding agents makes us so much more productive, that we don’t even need many of programmers and software engineers anymore. With the click of a button, everyone can create prototypes, full-scale apps, or even SaaS. While, in my opinion, LLMs do change the industry in some sense, not everything can be replaced by them, and humans are still the backbone of the development process. Much can be said about the quality of LLMs and coding agents: security issues, code quality, cost, dependence, etc., in this article I want to outline the point that is most important to me, personally, that is: learning.