PCF_LABEL_AWESOME Here for software stuff. Cursed with eternal optimism. I want to make it all better. Make Agile Great Again! Views are my own.
Portal Point, Antarctica
Joined March 2010
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Extinguished Engineer retweeted
Theo is touching on an important point here. Far too many programmers think their job is to meet the “requirements” to the letter. No more and no less. (Well, maybe less. 😅)
The resulting software is actively hostile to the user because the programmer didn’t think about—or even care about!—the user’s experience.
This poor performance at their actual job of converting user needs into working software has a number of consequences:
1. The programmer ensures that they are useless. Since they simply implement what someone else carefully specced out, they are actually a drain on the system. It typically takes less work for a skilled individual to simply implement the work correctly than it does to spec out with enough detail to get a mostly-correct result.
2. The programmer is ACTUALLY at risk of AI replacing them. If their only “value” (questionable) is implementing a spec that’s practically code in everything except name, why can’t we simply automate your job away? (Caveat on this one at the bottom)
3. Every time an organization is willing to accept code this poor of quality, the standards in the industry slip that much more. If you want to know why so many think AI is doing a better job, it’s because we’ve let the standards slip.
Now a small caveat on writing a detailed spec, I don’t think that’s the best use of anyone’s time. The best software is written collaboratively with many creative minds throwing ideas against a wall to slowly sculpt a better solution.
My favorite activity is what I call “dueling pens” where the PO is inputting ideas into a room where developers and UX are drawing those ideas on a whiteboard, where each drawing is a “yes, AND” addition.
When you setup your environment so that the software can be constructed in the middle of that “yes, AND” process, you don’t need a detailed spec. You just need enough for everyone to remember what was discussed as you flesh out the implementation.
Which is to say, you don’t “get requirements, go back, and implement”. You implement as the ideas are flowing. Preferably while you’re still in the room together!
If AI helps you do that, great. But you have to make the decision for yourself that you want to be in that team. Be creative. Be inventive. Ask every stupid question imaginable!
Become the engine of creation you were hired to be.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
The average engineer does not try to solve the root architectural problems in their system or career. They get stuck in sprint tickets, pull requests, and reactive bug fixing, living the same week over and over. It does not cross their minds to step back, analyze the system level, and redesign their approach so they can transition from a code-monkey to a strategic leader.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
If you’re early in your career maybe it’s helpful to hear that despite several decades leading large eng projects I still don’t really know what I’m doing. Every new project I’m still filled with that sense of “holy crap how do I solve this?” You always get better but if you’re doing your best work you’ll probably always be operating outside your comfort zone. Don’t be fooled into thinking we’ve all got it figured out, just figure out the smallest next step you can take towards solving that problem you thought was too hard.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
C# is the best backend language out there.
I need to tell you this again, now that the algo is fixed. In case you might have missed this
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
I’ve been trying to find good analogies for this.
The argument seems to be: “AI is intelligent because it does intelligent-like things, therefore it is cope to say it’s not intelligent.”
Some analogies:
- “The moon is really bright. Therefore it is capable of luminance.” Here of course we expose a manner of speaking. The moon reflects the sun’s light. The models reflect our own intelligence. The moon will never be a star.
- “A snail on the bed of a tow truck is really fast. Look, it’s moving from A to B at 60mph, it’s clearly fast.” But of course the snail is borrowing the truck’s velocity.
Notice how there is no controversy in calling the technology large language models because the term is perfectly apt: a map of language. This points to language as constructed by humans as the true source of magic, and LLMs being algorithms that can traverse this map at light speeds.
Before you think I’m being pedantic, understand that the nature of the words we use is precisely what’s at stake. That the moon *looks* bright is incontrovertible. Insisting however that the moon itself has any concept of inherent luminance is when you start to gaslight people into deranged realities that they will not stand for. Attempting to appropriate ageless conceptions like consciousness and intelligence to corporate technology by playing axiomatic word games is insanity.
Large language models do what they do and this is non-controversial. Personifying it with human-like attributes however is totally uncalled for, when it is easy enough for us to define new words that better capture the phenomenon.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about this and I think a good phrase for these technologies can be—hear me out:
“large language models”
The “it’s not AGI because machine intelligence is jagged” is dumb cope.
It’s obviously AGI. If you had a friend who had a 130 IQ, could write production code flawlessly, could write academic papers of a high research caliber, pass any exam in any field with flying colors, create a sophisticate LBO model, draw technical diagrams perfectly, compose poetry in any language, and could find solutions to significant unsolved mathematical problems, you would call that person a world historical genius. Certainly, no single human has ever had intelligence that “general” before.
Now you think it’s “not AGI” because it sometimes slips up and makes mistakes - so does any human that you would consider “extraordinarily intelligent.”
The professor might forget a colleagues name that he has known for a decade. He is still considered intelligent. The math genius might be a little autistic and shy, unable to maintain polite conversation. Still intelligent. You might stare at the fridge for 30 seconds unable to find the butter, despite 5 million years of evolution perfecting your visual intelligence.
We give intelligent humans a pass when they have jagged intelligence. So why the double standard?
The qualities people list as “necessary for AGI” are important traits to have, but no longer pertain to intelligence. People will say things like “true AGI requires agency, long term goal setting, embodiment, self-direct action”.
But none of those things are intelligence. Those are “things that humans have that AI lacks”. Raw intelligence, AI has it in spades. That other stuff - important yet, but broader than and different from intelligence.
The unwillingness of people to acknowledge that AGI obviously exists and has existed for a while is due to a kind of anthropic chauvinism - a psychological need to believe that humans are superior in every respect, that we possess soft skills that no machine could replicate.
Yes humans are different from machines, but if we are limiting the discussion solely to general intelligence, AI has it already. That battle is over.
If you want to reframe the discussion to matters of human dignity and personhood, fine, but that’s not an AGI question. That’s something else. Just take the loss on AGI already. It’s over.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
the most overpaid people in tech aren't engineers
they're the product managers who:
→ write tickets engineers already know
→ attend every meeting but make no decisions
→ take credit for shipped features
→ make $180k to move Jira cards
change my mind
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
GREEN FLAGS IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERS:
1. Can explain complex stuff in simple words (if a new joiner gets it, they actually understand it)
2. Writes readable code, not clever code (good names, small functions, boring patterns)
3. Thinks in tradeoffs, not absolutes (they will say “depends” and then tell you exactly what it depends on)
4. Cares about testing and observability (logs, metrics, traces, alerts… they want to debug fast at 3am)
5. Treats performance like a product feature (measures first, optimizes second, knows where latency actually comes from)
6. Owns failures without ego (postmortems, root cause, prevention, no blame games)
7. Communicates early and clearly (good PR descriptions, clear docs, good async updates)
8. Respects the user and the business (edge cases, data loss, migrations, backwards compatibility… they think beyond “it works on my machine”)
9. Keeps learning but stays practical (reads docs, ships small experiments, upgrades mental models over chasing hype)
Are there any other points I should add?
GREEN FLAGS IN MEN:
1. Has a close relationship with his parents (his mom especially)
2. Has hobbies (hiking, reading, guitar etc.)
3. Goes to the gym or plays a sport (shows consistency and discipline)
4. Likes to cook (or at least tries)
5. Wears clean, neat-looking clothes (takes care of himself)
6. Owns a pet
7. Is religious
8. Has kind, funny, polite friends
9. Is motivated and driven.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
Jenkins with 200 plugins isn't CI/CD. It's technical debt with a web interface.
I've seen teams spend more time maintaining their Jenkins instance than their actual product. Pipeline scripts that require a PhD to understand. Plugins that break every update.
Meanwhile, their competitors are shipping features daily with GitHub Actions or GitLab CI.
Your CI/CD tool should be invisible. If you're spending more than 5% of your time maintaining it, you chose wrong.
Simple tools, simple problems. Complex tools, complex nightmares.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
Why do developers overcomplicate things? They're not stupid or evil. I don't think it's any one factor. It's a convergence. Here's what comes to mind: 🧵
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
For a REST API hard delete operation of X, if X does not exist at request time, what status code should be returned?
27%204 (No Content)
68%404 (Not Found)
5%Other (please comment)
1,213 votes • Final results Extinguished Engineer retweeted
Most tech people who argue or disagree on here are comparing vastly different experiences as if they are the same. Our industry is so vast you could work to retirement and have zero points of common experiences with another techie on here.
It always pays to acknowledge this.
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
"The Shipping Illusion: A Trap of Looking Busy (While Standing Still)" buff.ly/isrRC0u — by Stephanie Leue
Extinguished Engineer retweeted
Google cloud: "It's only a major outage if it comes from the Outagè region of France" @googlecloud
