mathieu@laptop:~$ fortune
mathieu@laptop:~/blog$ cat are-we-all-running-inside-our-own-bubble.txt
In my previous post, I wrote about how big we can think (and were the limit might be). Now I wanna go a little deeper in what that means, and how it actually works inside-, and outside our bubble is.
I can't stress it enough that work, as a developer, is rapidly changing. I'm creating more features than ever before, code is more maintainable, more testable and quality is definitely increasing. (That might say something about my previous code but it is better nonetheless!)
But pushing more features is not a metric we should be focusing on, at least not as a baseline. I can think of many issues with this but one is a simple fact that not everybody is running (not in a literal sense, but that is how it sometimes feel). Today, there was a clear indication that all the new features and implementations of one of our bigger apps was "too fast" and "too much" to handle for the end user. Instead of an update every 3 to 4 months, an update landed every week. But not everybody is running, or in this sense, having such a different interval change in their industry as software engineering has.
So, what options do we have?
First of all, code should be better, more secure and have a better User Experience than ever before and there shouldn't be any excuse for that. Do not AI slop anything.
Secondly, lead by example. While it is easy to push features and throw them over a fence, there are many, many ways to improve the experience of the delivery of a feature than a simple changelog. LLM is very strong generating big chunks text of implemented features (that nobody reads), but it is also very good at creating custom tools. So instead of generating a list of fixes, why not create a tool that shows those features in an interactive way that is not only fun to watch, but also helps keeping the user engaged and not overwhelmed?
We need to do, and be, better and now is a great time to do that.
mathieu@laptop:~$ fortune
