InfoQ Homepage Productivity Content on InfoQ
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First Keynote at QCon San Francisco 2025: Reducing Friction by Nicole Forsgren
At QCon SF 2025, Dr. Nicole Forsgren highlighted how AI accelerates code generation but reveals deployment bottlenecks, urging a strategic pivot to optimizing Developer Experience (DevEx). With 31% of developer time lost to friction, focusing on effective feedback loops, flow state, and cognitive load management is vital for competitive survival and retention.
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Inside the Architectures Powering Modern AI Systems: QCon San Francisco 2025
Senior engineers face fast-moving AI adoption without clear patterns. QCon SF 2025 brings real-world lessons from teams at Netflix, Meta, Intuit, Anthropic & more, showing how to build reliable AI systems at scale. Early bird ends Nov 11.
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Microsoft Adds Agent Mode and Office Agent to Office Applications
Microsoft has expanded its Microsoft 365 Copilot platform with Agent Mode and Office Agent. The update moves Copilot beyond a conversational assistant into a system capable of running continuous, multi-step workflows across Microsoft 365 applications.
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AWS Launches Amazon Quick Suite, an Agentic AI Workspace
AWS has launched Amazon Quick Suite, a new AI-powered workspace designed to connect company data, automate workflows, and perform actions across business applications.
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AI Coding Tools Underperform in Field Study with Experienced Developers
Recent research reveals a surprising 19% increase in task completion time among developers using AI tools like Claude 3.5. Conducted by METR, this study highlights a "perception gap"—while developers felt faster, real-world performance lagged due to frictions with AI integration. These findings stress the need for rigorous evaluation of AI's impact in software development.
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How to Build Secure Software without Sacrificing Productivity
Security can clash with development efficiency. Focusing on minimizing breach impact can be more effective than prevention. Dorota Parad argues for flexibility in compliance and collaborating with security teams to define practical protections. Limiting blast radius and using automation can boost security with minimal productivity loss.
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From Architecture to Deployment: How AI-Powered Toolkits Are Unifying Developer Workflows
Developer tooling is undergoing a shift as AI moves beyond code completion to unify multiple stages of the software development workflow.
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GitHub Announces Public Preview of GitHub MCP Server
GitHub recently announced the official release of its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which is in public preview as of April 4th, 2025. Engineers can integrate with GitHub APIs using this open-source server, enabling automation and AI-powered interactions with the GitHub ecosystem.
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How Developers Can Eliminate Software Waste and Reduce Climate Impact
High performance and sustainability correlate; making software go faster by improving the efficiency of algorithms can reduce energy requirements, Holly Cummins said at QCon London. She suggested switching systems off when not in use to reduce the environmental footprint. Developers can achieve more by doing less, improving productivity, she said.
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Inflection Points in Engineering Productivity for Improving Productivity and Operational Excellence
As companies grow, investing in custom developer tools may become necessary. Initially, standard tools suffice, but as companies scale in engineers, maturity, and complexity, industry tools may no longer meet needs. Inflection points, such as a crisis, hyper-growth, or reaching a new market, often trigger investments, providing opportunities for improving productivity and operational excellence.
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AWS Introduces MCP Servers for AI-Assisted Cloud Development
AWS has launched the open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers, revolutionizing AI-powered code assistants. These servers enhance development speed and security, ensuring adherence to AWS best practices. With features like automated Infrastructure as Code and cost insights, MCP democratizes AWS expertise and empowers developers to optimize cloud solutions effortlessly.
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How Meta is Using a New Metric for Developers: Diff Authoring Time
Diff Authoring Time (DAT). DAT is a new metric developed by engineers at Meta to measure the duration required for developers to submit changes, known as "diffs," to the codebase. By tracking the time from the initiation of a code change to its submission, DAT offers insights into the efficiency of the development process and helps identify areas for improvement.
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Ensuring Security without Harming Software Development Productivity
Security can be at odds with a fast and efficient development process. At QCon San Francisco Dorota Parad presented how to create a foundation for security without negatively impacting engineering productivity. She showed how you can make your security strategy almost invisible to the engineers while embedding it deep into the culture at the same time.
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Learnings from Internal Tool Migrations to Support Software Engineering Efficiency
In her presentation at QCon San Francisco, Ying Dai shared two critical software engineering migration stories - one focused on production monitoring and the other on production deployments with automated validations. Both migrations were driven by the goal of enhancing engineering efficiency, but each came with its own challenges and lessons.
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DX Unveils New Framework for Measuring Developer Productivity
Software development intelligence platform DX has introduced a new framework named DX Core 4, designed to help engineering leaders measure and improve developer productivity. The framework aims to simplify this task by building on older established frameworks like the DORA metrics and SPACE.