[bdangubic]

another one, this is 2nd most frequent thing people write here, not sure how to even approach answering :)

so I’ll do what I was thought in first grade to never do and answer a question with a question - how much time per week does a brick layer spend laying bricks? they are looking at these new “robots” laying bricks automatically and talking on BrickLayerNews “man, the brick laying has not been a bottleneck for a long time.”

But to answer your question directly, a lot of time if other people do their job well. Last week I had about 7 hours of meetings, the rest of the time I was coding (so say 35 hours) minus breaks I had to take to stretch and rest my eyes

[paulhebert]

Interesting! I guess it really varies between jobs, roles, and companies.

Thats never been my experience but I have an odd skill set that mixes design and dev.

I’ve always spent a lot of time planning, designing, thinking, etc.

How detailed are the tickets if you spend all your time coding? You never have to think through architecture, follow up on edge cases the ticket writers didn’t anticipate, help coworkers with their tasks, review code, etc.?

[apsurd]

i think this is it. you're a bricklayer. No, the bottleneck for erecting buildings is not bricklaying.

Without taking all the time to write a dissertation to try to convince you, because why; how about we just start with even zoning laws and demographic analysis preclude the laying of the bricks.

is it so unreasonable to think it is not about the laying of the bricks?

[slopinthebag]

I think you comparing software development to brick laying says all anyone needs to hear about your approach to software development.

It's like saying the bottleneck in mathematics is arithmetic.

[bdangubic]

writing software, if you know what you are doing, is very similar to laying bricks. write smallest possible functions that do one thing and do it well and then compose them, like bricks, to make a house (which is what brick layers do).

comments like this come from places where it is more like bunch of chefs in a italian restaurant making spaghetti pasta (code) :)

[slopinthebag]

No, thats a common mechanistic view of building software but it's not really accurate. Unlike with bricks, the way you arrange your components and subcomponents has an effect on the entire system. It's a complex phenomenon.

Of course your view is quite common especially in the managerial class, and often leads to broken software development practices and the idea that you can just increase output by increasing input. One step away from hiring 9 pregnant women to make a baby in a month.

[bdangubic]

boy I am glad I had good fortune in my 30 years hacking to not work with people like you :)