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#softwareengineering

13 posts12 participants0 posts today
Jon Fazzaro<p>"The inability of developers to tell if a tool sped them up or slowed them down is fascinating in itself, probably applies to many other forms of human endeavour, and explains things as varied as why so many people think that AI has made them 10 times more productive, why I continue to use Vim, why people drive in London, etc."</p><p><a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/ai" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ai</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/softwareengineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>softwareengineering</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/developerexperience" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>developerexperience</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/productivity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>productivity</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/perception" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>perception</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/slower" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>slower</span></a></p><p><a href="https://johnwhiles.com/posts/mental-models-vs-ai-tools" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">johnwhiles.com/posts/mental-mo</span><span class="invisible">dels-vs-ai-tools</span></a></p>

Choose your generation dev rant.

Premise: You vibe code kids don't know hard work!

Millennial: I used to have to open a web browser, type a URL, go to a site called Stack Overflow, and copy-paste code into my repository.

GenXer: I used to have to type the code into my editor after I found a snippet in a book or magazine.

Old Gen Xer/Boomer: I didn't even have anything outside a language manual, so I just had to think.

#vibecoding attempt at #humor #SoftwareEngineering

An easy question about internet message headers (RFC 822 and subsequent revisions).

Take a message thread where each reply has a single parent message.
Such a thread is often shown as a tree, linking replies by their `References' header fields.
Why does _each_ such field contain _all_ parent message ids up to the "root" message of the thread?
Wouldn't the id just of the parent message be enough, as in the `In-Reply-To' header field?

#DistributedSystems
#InternetMessages
#SoftwareEngineering

KI wird die Softwareentwicklung revolutionieren.
Mag sein - aber anders als sich die meisten das denken, laut einer Studie der Carnell Universität.

#ai #ki #softwareengineering

arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

arXiv logo
arXiv.orgMeasuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer ProductivityDespite widespread adoption, the impact of AI tools on software development in the wild remains understudied. We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how AI tools at the February-June 2025 frontier affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers. 16 developers with moderate AI experience complete 246 tasks in mature projects on which they have an average of 5 years of prior experience. Each task is randomly assigned to allow or disallow usage of early 2025 AI tools. When AI tools are allowed, developers primarily use Cursor Pro, a popular code editor, and Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet. Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%--AI tooling slowed developers down. This slowdown also contradicts predictions from experts in economics (39% shorter) and ML (38% shorter). To understand this result, we collect and evaluate evidence for 20 properties of our setting that a priori could contribute to the observed slowdown effect--for example, the size and quality standards of projects, or prior developer experience with AI tooling. Although the influence of experimental artifacts cannot be entirely ruled out, the robustness of the slowdown effect across our analyses suggests it is unlikely to primarily be a function of our experimental design.

TECHNICAL DEBT is like a ROTTING ROOF

On rainy days, it's too wet to fix it.
On sunny days, there's no leak… so you ignore it.
Then one day, boom, ceiling caves in, buckets everywhere, and you're duct taping production at 2am.

That's technical debt.
Not just messy code. Not just bad practices.
It's what you chose not to fix when you could have.

The missing tests.
The config you hardcoded "just for now".
The abstraction you skipped because "it works".
The one extra iteration after the ticket was marked as "done".

And now it's slowing you down.
It's holding your future hostage.
You're spending engineering cycles bailing water, not shipping value.

We love to say we're "building", but half the time we're just… leak managers.
You can't scale rot.

So next time the sun's out, fix the roof.
Because when the rain hits, it's too late.

Neue Studie: KI-Assistenten bremsen erfahrene Entwickler aus
Laut einer Mitte Juli veröffentlichten RCT-Studie der Cornell University verlängert der Einsatz von KI-Tools wie Cursor Pro und Claude 3.5/3.7 die Arbeitszeit erfahrener Open-Source-Programmierer um 19 % – statt wie erhofft 20 % einzusparen.

Grund ist vor allem die noch geringe Zuverlässigkeit der Tools im professionellen Alltag.
#AIProductivity #SoftwareEngineering #KIRealität

arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

Testing is not my responsibility…

Is a statement uttered by many a software engineer.

I’ve uttered it too…

Along with:
"How did this bug get through testing?".

❗️This is called not taking responsibility.❗

It’s annoying when an issue is found you could
have prevented. 🤬

But it happens sometimes…

Rather than look for blame, try this: 👀

It should be evident to all that in today's software engineering space, economic forces profoundly shape decision-making on all sides, from developers' career planning influencing approach to product managers' consideration of a system or feature. Sadly, we rarely discuss these influences adequately in SWE academic settings, so it is no wonder that hustle-bro economic thought patterns dominate the conversation.