…
I potentially saved my client a bunch of money and embarrassment with that 3-line change.
Now, I consider that a productive day.
But had I been measured on my contribution by lines of code, or commits, or features finished, it would have been seen as a very unproductive day by my manager.
…
A great anecdote and some wise words from Jason Gorman on the nature of productivity and code.
This matches my feeling on AI. It’s good at making lots of code. Sometimes it even writes the right code. But something it rarely demonstrates skill at is comprehending the bigger issue. I’m sure we’re already seeing developers who “game” their employers’ productivity metrics, to the detriment of the end users, by having AI make “more” code without having to engage their brain and actually understand the problem.
(And, of course, there are employers who, whether intentionally or not, promote this kind of behaviour through their policies and success metrics.)
