Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Writing code is cheap now

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 522 posts

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#111

Post by falcor84 »

layer8 wrote: post #108
falcor84 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to the point we saturate systems downstream But that's point of TFA, no? Now that writing code is no longer the bottleneck, the upstream and downstream processes have become the new bottlenecks, and we need to figure out how to widen them. As I see it, the end goal for all of this is generating software at the speed of thought, or at least at the speed of speech. I want the digital butler to whom I could just say -…

> Now that writing code is no longer the bottleneck I think it’s contestable that writing the code was ever the main bottleneck. > As I see it, the end goal for all of this is generating software at the speed of thought, or at least at the speed of speech. The question is what distinguishes that from having AGI, and if the answer is “nothing”, then that will change the whole game entirely again.

Oh, absolutely, my vision depends on AGI (and maybe even ASI), and I definitely agree that it'll be a whole new ball game.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#112

Post by ben_w »

simonw wrote: post #85
benakj wrote: post #76

[flagged]

Out of curiosity, are you the same person who's constantly creating brand new accounts to have a go at me or are there more than one of you?

Given the relatively large number of new accounts I've been seeing recently, on all threads not just in response to you, I'm torn between "Hacker News become normal-internet-famous" and "dead internet reached us".

I scored 0* on a HN-Turing-Test game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070537

* or less, given everything I identified was a false positive

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#113

Post by nine_k »

vntok wrote: post #47
nine_k wrote: post #6

This fact is opening the floodgates of low-end products, which are somehow better than nothing, but are embarrassing to use.

True, however as these products have been designed and coded by LLMs from the ground up in 2025+, they are generally using modern (typed even) languages, the latest version of third party libraries, usually have documentation of sorts... sometimes they even have test suites. As such, they can often be improved as easily as one can prompt, which is much faster and easier than before. Notably in the FOSS world where on…

Better languages do not necessarily mean better architectural decisions, or even better performance, unless the humans pressure for that and burn tokens on that. With no engineer in the room, more technical issues will be left unnoticed and unaddressed.

Compare it to visual arts. With a guidance form an artist, AI tools can help create wonderful pictures. Without such guidance, or at least expert prompting, a typical one-shot image from Gemini is... well, at best recognizable as such.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#114

Post by fmbb »

falcor84 wrote: post #101
fmbb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very much not beside the point. Productivity is measured in how much value you get out from the hours your workers put in.

But that only gets you to a philosophical argument about what "value" is. Many would argue that being able to get your thing into a Super Bowl commercial is extremely valuable. I definitely have never built anything that did. It's very much imperfect, but the only consistently agreed upon and useful definition of "value" we have in the West is monetary value, and in that sense, we have at least a few major examples o…

OK but that also means VR was a success, and web 3, and NFTs.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#115

Post by bwestergard »

simonw wrote: post #93
bwestergard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"eye-watering, blistering growth from the new hot applied AI startups and labs" Could you give us a few examples?

Claude Cowork was apparently built in less than two weeks using Claude Code, and appears to be getting significant usage already.

That's certainly a good example of a tool developed quickly thanks to AI assistance.

But coding assistance tools must themselves be evaluated by what they produce. We won't see significant economic growth through using AI tools to build other AI tools recursively unless the there are companies using these tools to make enough money to justify the whole stack.

I believe there are teams out there producing software that people are willing to pay for faster than they did before. But if we were on the verge of rapid economic growth, I would expect HN commenters to be able to rattle these off by the dozen.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#116

Post by sillyfluke »

dw_arthur wrote: post #109
crystal_revenge wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new skill is mastering the craft of directing cheap inputs toward valuable outcomes. Strongly agree with this. It took me awhile to realize that "agentic engineering" wasn't about writing software it was about being able to very quickly iterate on bespoke tools for solving a very specific problem you have. However, as soon as you start unblocking yourself from the real problem you want to solve, the agentic eng…

It's funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. I'm going to be really confused if this is still the case at the end of the year. A whole year of access to these latest agentic models has to produce visible economic changes or something is wrong.

>funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet.

That's because the threat is now not other businesses, but your own users who decide to vibe-code their own "Claw" product instead of using your company's vibeslop, so there are no buyers for your single-week product. All these new harness developers are engaging in resume-driven development to save their own asses. The only ones that are not naked when the tide recedes are the ones that are able to jump to the next layer of abstraction on the infinite staircase, until the next tide comes five seconds later.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#117

Post by falcor84 »

fmbb wrote: post #114
falcor84 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that only gets you to a philosophical argument about what "value" is. Many would argue that being able to get your thing into a Super Bowl commercial is extremely valuable. I definitely have never built anything that did. It's very much imperfect, but the only consistently agreed upon and useful definition of "value" we have in the West is monetary value, and in that sense, we have at least a few major examples o…

OK but that also means VR was a success, and web 3, and NFTs.

Well, yes, these were definitely a success for some. And I personally still believe that VR will be a success in the longer-term.

In any case, I agree with the grandparent post about the distinction between being successful and good.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#118

Post by crystal_revenge »

dw_arthur wrote: post #109
crystal_revenge wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new skill is mastering the craft of directing cheap inputs toward valuable outcomes. Strongly agree with this. It took me awhile to realize that "agentic engineering" wasn't about writing software it was about being able to very quickly iterate on bespoke tools for solving a very specific problem you have. However, as soon as you start unblocking yourself from the real problem you want to solve, the agentic eng…

It's funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. I'm going to be really confused if this is still the case at the end of the year. A whole year of access to these latest agentic models has to produce visible economic changes or something is wrong.

I used to think this was a sign that AI code isn't really useful, but I've changed my tune (also I believe these numbers have changed in the last few months).

As an example: One of my most promising projects I was discussing with a friend and we realized together we could potentially use these tools to build a two person agency with no need to hire anyone ever. If this were to work, could theoretically make nice revenue and it shouldn't show up in any metric anywhere.

Additionally I've heard of countless teams cancelling their contracts with outsourced engineers because cheap but bad coders in India are worse that an LLM and still cost more. I'm not sure if there's a number around this activity, but again, these type of changes don't show up in the usual places.

My current belief is not that AI will replace traditional software engineering it will replace a good chunk of the entire model of software.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#119

Post by sillyfluke »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #118
dw_arthur wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. I'm going to be really confused if this is still the case at the end of the year. A whole year of access to these latest agentic models has to produce visible economic changes or something is wrong.

I used to think this was a sign that AI code isn't really useful, but I've changed my tune (also I believe these numbers have changed in the last few months). As an example: One of my most promising projects I was discussing with a friend and we realized together we could potentially use these tools to build a two person agency with no need to hire anyone ever. If this were to work, could theoretically make nice reve…

>One of my most promising projects I was discussing with a friend and we realized together we could potentially use these tools to build a two person agency with no need to hire anyone ever...My current belief is not that AI will replace traditional software engineering it will replace a good chunk of the entire model of software

You're not following your last line to its logical conclusion regarding your own prospects: no one is going to buy the vibeslop your two person agency is selling because they'd rather create and maintain their own vibeslop instead of dealing with yours.

If you follow some of your thoughts to their logical conclusion you'll realize the parent is right: there will be limited productivity that ends up fueling the economy when nobody is buying each other's vibeslop.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#120

Post by fragmede »

dw_arthur wrote: post #109
crystal_revenge wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new skill is mastering the craft of directing cheap inputs toward valuable outcomes. Strongly agree with this. It took me awhile to realize that "agentic engineering" wasn't about writing software it was about being able to very quickly iterate on bespoke tools for solving a very specific problem you have. However, as soon as you start unblocking yourself from the real problem you want to solve, the agentic eng…

It's funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. I'm going to be really confused if this is still the case at the end of the year. A whole year of access to these latest agentic models has to produce visible economic changes or something is wrong.

I wouldn't say it hasn't shown up. The number of ShowHN's per weekend has definitely gone up, and while that isn't rigorous scientific proof, I'd consider is a leading edge indicator of something. Unfortunately, we as an industry have yet to agree on anything approaching a scientific measure of productivity, other than to collectively agree that Lines of Code is universally agree that LoC is terrible. Thus even if someone was able to quantify that, say, they're having days where they generate 5000 LoC when previously they were getting O(500) LoC, that's not something we could agree upon as improved productivity.

So then the question is, lis there anything other than feels to say productive has or has not gone up? What would we accept as actual evidence one way or another? Commits-per-day is similarly not a good measure either. Jira tickets and tshirts sizes? We don't have a good measure, so while ShowHN's per weekend is equally dumb, it's also equally good in the bag of lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Post reply on HN