Having in the person taking these meetings for a software vendor, it can get really toxic quickly and I never had more than 1 meeting a quarter with really toxic people and they were at least paying for the product and maintenance so hearing them out was part of the job. It unfortunate to get to the point where you view customer requests as antagonistic, but I can see how it happens. Some people really feel entitled, and some have a job to do and limited resources or control to do it in.

While the solutions you list can help, it will not solve the haunted graveyard problem, just ask all of the companies with Cobol programs in production.

I told them it was hard to become a C expert without understanding and using pointers and they didn't like that answer. https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...

I would like to point out that when agile, and even Scrum to some degree, was introduced it was a way for people creating software to take back control of a runaway process that prevented team from doing their best work. It was a grassroots movement championed by people invested in finding better ways to create software that were less stressful and more successful.

Most of the issues in the article were coopted in Scrum to take control of software creating back from the teams. Whatever replaces Scrum, and agile, will need to learn from the mistakes and compromises of Scrum or it will suffer the same fate as Scrum and become a tool to force teams into a delivery model that gives managers and executives more control while reducing their accountability.

Room service counted as a room check so security only did it if you refused room service.

Becoming a Nasdaq-100 company is a trailing indicator of going mainstream. By 2005 RedHat and Enterprise Linux had won, and Sun had about 5 years before Oracle purchased them.

OpenStack is great if you want to manage your own data center and some companies should do that. It is a cost/benefit analysis that some will make on the side of doing their own thing.

The main goal of work in progress limits to get work to done rather than starting new work (that doesn't get to done).

Ideally in Scrum your sprint commitment is a work in progress limit but in practice it isn't treated as such for reasons. Kanban can allow expedited issues to address an "emergency" issue but even that has a WIP of 1 so emergencies have to be prioritized.

Testing after the fact usually means your tests a designed based on the code and not on what the code should do. Sometimes their little difference between the two, sometimes there is a large difference.

In my experience writing tests first is a slow down to speed up technique where the code is easier to write and maintain because it is tested and has built in regression testing.

Companies entrust their business to a black box that sometimes says no now. AI will not change that, and I agree it will get worse.

It is the irony of automation that some people still need the skills, knowledge, and abilities even more to fix problems that the automation can't fix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation

That said, I will still go to Starbucks while traveling because the stores are everywhere, and I will get a consistent quality drink. So I am not anti-Starbucks but increased prices without an increase in drink quality limits my desire to go there.

"Totaled" to an insurance company means they think the cost of repair at their contracted rates is more than the cost of paying out the "value" of the car. It is a business assessment, not an assessment of the vehicle.

It is either a priority to do with time set aside to do it or it isn't, and you get what you get. Even a time-box, best effort documentation effort is going to have a better result than "hoping" it gets done and making it a lower priority.

I don't think we have the correct word for what LLMs do but lie and hallucinations are not really correct.

My understanding, which is not legal or tax advice, is that, as a private person, you pay taxes in the state you have your primary residence in. There are a lot of rules around what it means to have a primary residence, so you need to check those.