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Crawl Before You Run
AI is going to have a big impact on the world. I don’t think there’s anyone that can dispute that claim right now. Between machine learning and some of the newer LLM’s like GPT-4 and LLAMA we’re going to be able to automate more and more complex tasks, generate content faster, and teach computers to do more than they could before. As a result, we see more companies pivoting to AI in their product offerings, racing to be the first or the best implementation of the Cool New Feature just as we see a thousand fly-by-night startups trying to capitalize on the glut of VC dollars earmarked for AI innovation. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, either, but as someone who has been in the industry for a while and who’s seen a thing or two, I do have to wonder if any of these companies are ready for it.
Product and software maturity is a topic that doesn’t get brought up enough. Standards are boring and restrictive, and people don’t like talking about them. But standards are invaluable tools for measuring progress and maturity of products and applications, and any serious company needs to have standards in place to enforce some kind of quality benchmark. But, from my experience, lots of companies are content to let each development team define their own standards, from code style and testing coverage to bug tracking and remediation. However, often these standards don’t go any further than the scope of a single…
