Have We Lost Our Way? (A Developer's Small Crisis of Confidence)

There was a time when we built things to last.

Now we build MVPs to maybe survive the quarter.

This isn’t a post about how everything used to be better. It’s just an observation — and maybe a quiet protest — about how easy it is to confuse activity for progress when the rituals of delivery become more important than the value delivered.

Have We Lost Our Way?

Somewhere along the way, we started measuring the number of tickets closed instead of whether anything actually got better.

We replaced architecture with story points.

We replaced meaningful iteration with ceremonies so performative they deserve their own Oscars category.

We got really good at “velocity” and forgot that shipping garbage faster is not the same as improvement.

“Deliver working software.”

Remember that one? It used to be a principle.

Now it’s just something you hear right before someone tells you they’re rewriting a service because the old one was written in the “wrong” language.

This isn’t nostalgia

I’m not saying waterfall was better.

I’m saying we’ve swung too far the other way.

Where once we spent six months planning a login form, now we spend six months pretending not to plan anything — and somehow end up with three frontends, five services, and nothing reusable.

Every generation of devs thinks they’re the first to see the mess.

But we’ve been here before. And we’ll be here again. The best we can do is notice it earlier, name it honestly, and maybe do a little less damage next time.

🗂 Originally posted at thecynical.dev — a side blog for developers who’ve survived legacy Java, agile transformations, and frameworks that promised joy but delivered YAML.