Where Does Developer Time Go? A 40-Year Study Reveals the Answer
For decades, developers have spent most of their time figuring out systems. Research shows this remains consistently high, around 58% even when accounting for navigation time, from 1979 to 2018. The article argues that understanding a system is fundamentally a decision-making process, and reading code is merely a low-efficiency, non-scalable means of gathering information. The author introduces the concept of "Moldable Development," advocating for creating custom tools tailored to specific problems, reducing reliance on code reading, and thus boosting development efficiency. The article concludes by recommending Glamorous Toolkit, a moldable development environment designed to facilitate the "how not to read code" conversation.