> The trade-off between quality and speed of development has always been a tenet of software engineering. Agentic coding changes the equation a lot, but the equation is still there.
The quality and speed tradeoff doesn't matter if other incentives aren't aligned. In today's product-driven world, where usage stats are compiled in real-time, features are added and then pop-ups, nudges, etc are added to software to get product usage up. These features may or may not add quality, relevance, etc. But the "success" is measured in usage, forced or not. This is essentially Microsoft today (especially with copilot), but even after every major apple OS update, I get "what's new" pop ups for every Apple app (notes, reminders, mail, etc) on every platform (iPad/iPhone/Mac) that I own. I opened the email app to check my email, don't get in my way!
The quality and speed tradeoff doesn't matter if other incentives aren't aligned. In today's product-driven world, where usage stats are compiled in real-time, features are added and then pop-ups, nudges, etc are added to software to get product usage up. These features may or may not add quality, relevance, etc. But the "success" is measured in usage, forced or not. This is essentially Microsoft today (especially with copilot), but even after every major apple OS update, I get "what's new" pop ups for every Apple app (notes, reminders, mail, etc) on every platform (iPad/iPhone/Mac) that I own. I opened the email app to check my email, don't get in my way!