We got faster, but what we got faster at doing was creating busy work for each other. So the volume of work is higher but the signal to noise ratio is lower.

"We’re going faster by passing the slow part (the reading, the actual understanding) to whoever comes next"

sounds like my boss, no docs, no procedure XD

This article I think shares my thoughts on it, Arguably I don't know if the devs even got faster... Like its a nice resource but, there's so much trial and error involved now, and every prompt now requires essentially relearning a new codebank.

Like sure immediate result got faster... but you lose all that with the extended time taken learning how it works and why it works.

I disagree with the premise. Never blindly trust a piece of code, document or statement written by a human or AI.

You weren't reviewing properly before. You were slack. You let problems through. Now you have to review properly and oh no it's slower than just clicking approve

Nights of winter turn me cold
Fears of dying, getting old
We ran the race, the race was won
By running slowly

What I have found is: if the AI operator cares, they can tell it to make the instructions, or summary, or whatever it is, whatever length they want it to be. Just summarize the most important parts to half a page, or go into extreme depth on every section. Target 300-400 words, or 3500-4000... whatever you feel is appropriate for the topic and the target audience.

Not strictly about AI, when I write something explaining something technical for my manager (who is technical and can understand it all, but rarely has the time to) what I often find myself doing is getting to the end, then going back and writing a 25 words or less summarization of what he actually wants to know to communicate this up the line to his managers - then leaving the 3-5 pages of technical regurgitation of details that led me to that conclusion as reference for the one or two little details he'll possibly be interested in for his own curiosity.

The problem I have with short instructions is: you never know what details you're leaving out that are going to matter in the future until people start using your instructions and making bad assumptions because you didn't over-emphasize a point - like: writing an instruction that says "accept all the defaults" - well, apparently our colleagues in the overseas office weren't capable of following that particular instruction without an additional big bold NOTE: hitting them over the head to emphasize: no, really, you're going to regret all the extra work you have to do if you don't accept the default options.

It's an iterative process, and should be the same whether or not you're using an AI agent to do the writing for you. Try, fail. Try again, fail again, fail better next time.

Excellent analysis.

Inevitable conclusion: "Ah, reading the code is expensive. It's probably fine to trust it, right???"