The AI-Ready Software Developer – Index

You attached a code-generating firehose to your dev plumbing, and measured the pressure of the water going in to be 10x what it was before.

So you can’t understand why the business is complaining that they’re not getting the power shower of additional value you promised them. 4 years into this “age of AI” in software development, and nobody’s been able to demonstrate significant return on their investment.

Also, why are the carpets so wet?

The explanation is actually quite simple.

Industry data and empirical studies about the impact of AI coding assistants on development team productivity show a clear trend.

AI code generation used by teams with bottlenecks, blockers and quality leaks in the development process makes delivery delays and problems in production worse.

advertisement

And we have a pretty good idea why. Optimising a non-bottleneck like coding in a development system with real bottlenecks – like testing, code review and integration – will make those bottlenecks worse.

Only teams who were already high-performing are seeing any tangible benefits from using AI.

It turns out that the key to being effective with AI coding assistants is being effective without them.

This is my guide – based on experience, experiment and evidence built over the last 3 years – to getting some actual value out of the code-generating firehose.

Unknown's avatar

Author: codemanship

Founder of Codemanship Ltd and code craft coach and trainer

Leave a comment