People act like writing code is the hard part of software. It is not. It never has been, it never will be. Writing code is the easiest part of software engineering, and it’s getting easier by the day. The hard parts are what you do with that code—operating it, understanding it, extending it, and governing it over its entire lifecycle.
The present wave of generative AI tools has done a lot to help us generate lots of code, very fast. The easy parts are becoming even easier, at a truly remarkable pace. But it has not done a thing to aid in the work of managing, understanding, or operating that code. If anything, it has only made the hard jobs harder.
Matt has some smart reckons on the relationship between time and technology:
The factory bell, the railway timetable, the telegraph wire, the always-on smartphone — each imposed a new temporal discipline, each produced its own characteristic form of exhaustion, and each was eventually (partially, imperfectly) domesticated through a combination of regulation, design, and collective action.
- Install Stuff Indiscriminately From npm
- Pick a Framework Before You Know You Need One
- Always, Always Require a Compilation Step
On the one hand I still really enjoy writing code and making something work and look good (ish) and put it online where anyone in the world can see it. It’s still like magic. And is still some kind of personal affirmation, a way of saying “here I am!”, of enjoying that it’s noticed by someone, somewhere.
True.
On the other hand, the maintenance. It’s not like this is new to me, keeping things going for years, decades. And I try to make things as easy as possible – keep things up to date, make things in similar ways, stick to reliable and boring technologies, don’t start too many things, etc. But, especially when several things aren’t quite working right, it’s such a weight.
Also true.
Chat is rarely a suitable interface for most tasks. Here, Maggie Appleton explores and prototypes some alternatives.
A handy round-up of recent wrtings on artificial insemination.
From a browser bug this morning, back to the birth of hypertext in 1945, with a look forward to a possible future for web browsers.
You’re in a desert, you see a tortoise lying on its back, and your call is very important to us.
Compression, aviation, percussion, and teuthology.
Seminal technology.
The h-entry microformat and the Cache API are a perfect pairing for offline pages.