Some time ago, I shared an article from Honeycomb that had a notion of the "durable vs disposable" code. The gist is that there are two fundamental types of code bases: durable (OSes, databases, compilers, etc.) - those that should be predictable and stable; and disposable (PoCs, experiments, etc.).

In her new article, Charity Majors elaborates on this concept. There are some insightful things there. For example, that the cost of software is defined not by how hard is to write the code, but what degree do you need to maintain it. Also:

If I had to guess, I suspect it [writing the code\] won’t be a profession at all so much as a skill set, much like typing or spreadsheets, that any tech-literate modern worker is expected to pick up in order to perform the functions of their job in marketing, sales, product, design, etc.

However

Anything that can be done with disposable code probably will be, because as we all know, durable software is expensive and hard. But disposable software is a skill set; durable code is a profession.

Anyway, this is an interesting read.

#culture #programming #ai