I’m thinking about this topic because of the popular usages of AI and for How do I use AI in software development?.
I think it is generally accepted that trying to measure productivity outside of a factory floor doesn’t work well. There’s a reason bosses measure output there and they do not do it for software engineers. If it let them push more out of software engineers they would do it in a heartbeat. Agile is a wild construction often attempting and failing to do just that.
It’s common wisdom not to measure lines of code or other proxy productivity metrics.
No two tasks I’ve ever done are identical. Many are similar to things I’ve done in the past. At work I think I am literally never doing the same thing twice. Even if the thing I’m trying to do is the same, the context is different. And the solution will need to be a little different because of it.