GitHub CEO on what AI means for developer salaries, SaaS, and more

So can I just demystify three terms you've said that maybe need explanation for non-developers? Because this is a super relevant conversation about how work changes that we're having beyond coding and software development.

So you said three things.

One is unit tests.

So roughly, you know, when a developer writes a component of code in order to know whether they've written the right thing, they should also write a test.

If it passes the test, they've written the right thing, unless, of course, they've specified the test wrongly.

So that was one thing you described.

The other thing you talked about were the idea of pull requests.

This is really about how you file each iteration of your code with a note of the work that you actually did, so that you technically have an audit trail to work your way back, like Hansel and Gretel, when they were meant to leave the...

the sweets trail in the forest.

And the other thing you said, which if people haven't worked with engineers, I think is so important, is the notion that an engineer gets into flow state.

They become one with the code because what you're doing is you're taking the amorphous complex world and you're framing it into logical deterministic code, and it requires a class of focus that I don't think you see in any other activities.

Now, you're the sort of developer advocate on this call.

Is that a fair reflection of those three ideas?

You hit the head on the nail.

Is that how you say it? You hit the head on the nail.

Or the nail on the head,

I think.

Either way, we're fine.

We're friends here.

The hammer on the nail.

No, but I think software development is a combination of creative work, of art, something that's very similar to what an artist does, and it's also production.

what Bill Gates famously called the software factory and both of these things are combined and so part of the job of a developer is being creative implementing something in software and the other part is working with the team developers product managers designers to verify the product and that is both from a UI UX perspective like looking if the product actually does and look like it was intended to be but also from a code quality perspective from a does the you know the The piece of software I produce, does that align with what the rest of my team has been doing? Or is there now a conflict between those things? So a lot of the time that developers are spending every day is actually on that production side of the creative process.

And often that is the more boring piece for many developers.

And that's where automation is great because I actually want to spend more time in the creative part of it.

You know, designing ultimately what I'm shipping to my customers and automate as much as I can on the production side.