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Writing code is cheap now

simonwillison.net

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Re: Writing code is cheap now

#201

Post by locknitpicker »

stackghost wrote: post #194
LtWorf wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think these people will now produce better results with the assistance of an LLM that was trained on their work?

No, that's the opposite of what I think. Bootcamp grads are basically obsolete now. The real skill has always been the ability to make good design decisions and that's still the case in the LLM era.

> Bootcamp grads are basically obsolete now.

I beg to differ. I know for a fact that some companies started hiring people with LLM experience, whose only expertise is spending all Copilot enterprise account tokens on their first week at the job and proceed to whine that the lack of tokens was stifling their creativity.

Say what you may about boot camps, but at least the people getting hired could do things and understand what they are doing.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#202

Post by inejge »

simonw wrote: post #144
tabs_or_spaces wrote: post #130

> Code has always been expensive. Producing a few hundred lines of clean, tested code takes most software developers a full day or more. Many of our engineering habits, at both the macro and micro level, are built around this core constraint. > ... > Writing good code remains significantly more expensive I think this is a bad argument. Code was expensive because you were trying to write the expensive good code in the…

I was careful to say "Good code still has a cost" and "delivering good code remains significantly more expensive than [free]" rather than the more aesthetically pleasing "Good code is expensive. I chose this words because I don't think good code is nearly as expensive with coding agents as it was without them. You still have to actively work to get good code, but it takes so much less time when you have a coding agen…

> I was careful to say "Good code still has a cost" and "delivering good code remains significantly more expensive than [free]" rather than the more aesthetically pleasing "Good code is expensive.

Which is nuance that will get overlooked or waved away by upper management who see the cost of hiring developers, know that developers "write code", and can compare the developer salary with a Claude/Codex/whatever subscription. If the correction comes, it will be late and at the expense of rank and file, as usual. (And don't be naive: if an LLM subscription can let you employ fewer developers, that subscription plus offshore developers will enable even more cost saving. The name of the game is cost saving, and has been for a long time.)

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#203

Post by arkh »

Every modern (and not so modern) software development method hinge on one thing: requirements are not known and even if known they'll change over time. From this you get the goal of "good" code which is "easy to change code".

Do current LLM based agents generate code which is easy to change? My gut feeling is a no at the moment. Until they do I'd argue code generated from agents is only good for prototypes. Once you can ask your agent to change a feature and be 100% sure they won't break other features then you don't care about how the code looks like.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#204

Post by mjevans »

ehnto wrote: post #148
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…

That's a great insight about iterating on bespoke tools. I have seen the most speed up when diving into new tools, or making new tools as AI can make the initial jump quite painless, and I can get straight to the problem solving. But I get barely any speedup using it on legacy projects in tools I know well. Often enough it slows me down so net benefit is nil or worse. Another commentor said it makes the easy part eas…

That's my observation / fear as well. It makes delivering something that sort of works easy. It makes doing that well more difficult by obscuring the problem domain from the humans and expanding the standard library of tools into patterns of using said standard library. Hope they're correct for your use case.

There's also the question of the true cost of all the hardware, electricity, and potential output that's being tossed onto the pyres. We aren't getting the real Cortana from the books / games; we're getting GIR trained on the corpus of fallible human code, prompted by fallible humans.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#205

Post by alexhans »

I am pushing for this judicious Eval [1] Driven Development where tech/non tech users use intent when coding to minimally design some known aspects and try to build simply and using common standards across the team (that should be in the context of the agent) to produce the minimal amount of human readable and clean code that would do the job. The more the building blocks they work with are simple, easy to validate and rely on the proper unit tests, integration tests, data tests the more chance that things can be "one shotted".

One huge barrier is fighting entropy. You should be wary of prototypes which create false expectations and don't help product evolution whereas tracer bullets [2] might be better if you want to quickly show something and adjust.

Testing and testability are concepts that aren't intuitive or easy until you develop a feel for them so we should be preaching feeling that pain and moving slowly and with intent and working minimally [3] when you actually want to share or maintain your coding artifact. There should be no difference between judicious human and computer code. Don't suddenly start putting What instead of why in comments or repeating everything.

Helping non tech people become builders or sharers is a challenge beyond "vibe coding" and the agent skills [4] space is fascinating for that. Like most things AI (LLM), UX matters more than almost anything else.

[1] https://ai-evals.io

[2] concept from the Pragmatic Programmer, https://www.aihero.dev/tracer-bullets

[3] https://alexhans.github.io/posts/series/evals/measure-first-...

[4] https://alexhans.github.io/posts/series/evals/building-agent...

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#206

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

daxfohl wrote: post #104
daxfohl wrote: post #98

It's like the allegory of the retired consultant's $5000 invoice (hitting the thing with a hammer: $5, knowing where to hit it: $4995). Yeah, coding is cheaper now, but knowing what to code has always been the more expensive piece. I think AI will be able to help there eventually, but it's not as far along on that vector yet.

Possibly even more important than knowing where to hit it (what to code), is knowing where not to hit it (what not to code). Hitting the thing in the wrong place can lead to catastrophe. Making a code change you don't need can blow up production or paint your architecture into a corner. AIs so far seem to prefer addition by addition, not addition by subtraction or addition by saying "are you sure?". This doesn't mean…

Spot on

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#207

Post by cpursley »

bfbf wrote: post #195
tabs_or_spaces wrote: post #130

> Code has always been expensive. Producing a few hundred lines of clean, tested code takes most software developers a full day or more. Many of our engineering habits, at both the macro and micro level, are built around this core constraint. > ... > Writing good code remains significantly more expensive I think this is a bad argument. Code was expensive because you were trying to write the expensive good code in the…

In my experience, it’s even more effort to get good code with an agent-when writing by hand, I fully understand the rationale for each line I write. With ai, I have to assess every clause and think about why it’s there. Even when code reviewing juniors, there’s a level of trust that they had a reason for including each line (assuming they’re not using ai too for a moment); that’s not at all my experience with Codex.…

Throw your next bug at this: https://skills.sh/obra/superpowers/systematic-debugging

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#208

Post by TheDong »

arkh wrote: post #203

Every modern (and not so modern) software development method hinge on one thing: requirements are not known and even if known they'll change over time. From this you get the goal of "good" code which is "easy to change code". Do current LLM based agents generate code which is easy to change? My gut feeling is a no at the moment. Until they do I'd argue code generated from agents is only good for prototypes. Once you…

> Once you can ask your agent to change a feature and be 100% sure they won't break other features then you don't care about how the code looks like.

That bar is unreasonably high.

Right now, if I ask a senior engineer to change a feature in a mature codebase, I only have perhaps 70% certainty they won't break other features. Tests help, but only so far.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#209

Post by xyzsparetimexyz »

beagle3 wrote: post #163
torginus wrote: post #78

I think there's a good parallel with AI images - generating pictures has gotten ridiculously easy and simple, yet producing art that is meaningful or wanted by anyone has gotten only mildly easier. Despire the explosion of AI art, the amount of meaningful art in the world is increased only by a tiny amount.

But the amount of pleasing useful art has gone up x1000; If I had a blog, I would now have access to art that would be a perfect fit for my words, whereas 5 years ago, I would have to do with a my own (talent-lacking) doodles. Would some people prefer no art/illustration to AI generated art? Sure. But even more would prefer no art to my doodles.

I for one would rather see the doodles
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