One thing I've noticed with generative AI is it's now easier than ever to write more lines of code.
Before, a backend guy asked to add an intranet page would make an austere page -bare html with barely any styling or javascript. Today, the same guy given the same task can turn in something with styling, javascript, internationalisation, interactive form validation, progress spinner, minification build stage, linting, maybe even automated browser tests.
And I have to code review it. Now the bottleneck of writing the code has been removed, I now find code review is the bottleneck - and a bottleneck facing much higher flow must either let more through, or start applying back pressure.
Sometimes I think an evil genie granted my wish for better tested code by trying to drown me in it.
I mean they could have turned in one of the countless HTML "boilerplate" projects before LLMs too. It hasn't been necessary to start completely from scratch for quite a while now. I'm surprised any professional web developer wouldn't maintain their own boilerplate as templates that they can quickly roll off the production line. Tools like cookiecutter[0] have been available for a long time. Sometimes I feel like LLMs are just allowing people to somewhat catch up to where others were decades ago.
Before, a backend guy asked to add an intranet page would make an austere page -bare html with barely any styling or javascript. Today, the same guy given the same task can turn in something with styling, javascript, internationalisation, interactive form validation, progress spinner, minification build stage, linting, maybe even automated browser tests.
And I have to code review it. Now the bottleneck of writing the code has been removed, I now find code review is the bottleneck - and a bottleneck facing much higher flow must either let more through, or start applying back pressure.
Sometimes I think an evil genie granted my wish for better tested code by trying to drown me in it.