✨ Impressive is not always effective
When AI generates something, the result is often "impressive." We might marvel at how quickly lots of code is generated that mostly works. Generated documentation is extremely detailed and well formatted. AI-created diagrams are colorful, use emojis effectively and every last detail is included. However, "impressive" is often the antithesis of "effective" for one simple reason - simplicity is missing.
- It is difficult to understand the architecture of the code because there is so much of it.
- "Why" is nearly impossible to draw from the expansive details in the documentation. Who has time to dig it out?
- A quick glance at a diagram reveals nothing about the big-picture without laboriously processing many details.
- The complexity of machine-generated designs is often a brute-force approach that lacks style, elegance, and consistency.
Architecture, Why, Big-picture, and Elegance - these are still the foundations of great work. Learn to look past impressive things. Is the architecture clear? Are the reasons obvious? Is it easy to understand at a high-level what is going on? Is the design and implementation clean and simple? There are two paths:
- "Impressive" is the route to compounding technical debt.
- "Effective" is the only way to compounding improvements.
