Prelude to Creation-Consumption Cycle
This is a prelude to my next... topic. A filler.
We've focused a bit on writing, reading, and reviewing code. There are links that cover quite a bit on these too, especially relating to cognition and craftsmanship.
The earlier SPIRIT series imply that 'back in the day', writing and reading code, at a certain cadence with certain qualitative measurements (stopping short of Goodhart's Law), was the enabling friction that separated the stronger from the weaker software development teams. Agentic development has reduced that below the threshold of noticing, hence the want of a human-in-the-loop to keep the posterity (code, documentation, storytelling outputs) coupled with agent advancement.
In my work, I have stopped creating code but have started consuming code reviews. That asymmetry might be... intentional. I prefer to use code reviews to externalize my thinking process so that the team - people and agents alike (maybe I do need to eventually clarify these definitions...) - can absorb them in the future.
The code repository is already augmented with some style guides and linter rules, and I even keep my stash of instruction files for coding agents to enhance my local coding session/context window. Still, I have to suggest my personal taste at times for a variety of reasons: compaction, niche cases, verbose or irrelevant code comments, assumptions in my prompts that I forgot to clarify leading to slightly over-engineered code. That is where my code review comments survive and hopefully serves as markers as to why I had to make them in the first place.
Just to wrap up this filler piece - I need some more time to collate my earlier notes on this topic - both to tie back to SPIRIT, and to link to this outro, that I saw on an article once on code cognitive load:
Easy means low cost of creation, simple means low cost of consumption
Assuming I do get my life in order and find said time, it should be a standalone piece next week, at most a two-parter. ✌️