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Writing code is cheap now

simonwillison.net

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Re: Writing code is cheap now

#311

Post by animal531 »

kmlx wrote: post #263
animal531 wrote: post #260

Here's an easy to understand example. I've been playing EvE Online and it has an API with which you can query the game to find information on its items and market (as well as several other unrelated things). It seems like a prime example for which to use AI to quickly generate the code. You create the base project and give it the data structures and calls, and it quickly spits out a solution. Everything is great so f…

been there. for these kinds of projects i never start with code, i start with specs. i sometimes spend days just working on the specs. once the specs are clear i start coding, which is completely different monster. basically not that different from a common workflow (spec > ticket > grooming > coding; more or less), but everything with AI.

Yeah, I make sure to spend my time on the hard problems and where you need to design for the future. I use AI up to around method level after that, have it do the drudge work of typing up tedious text, or to complete required boilerplate etc.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#312

Post by Retr0id »

heisenbit wrote: post #286
bfbf wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

There is demand for non scalable, not committed to be maintained code where smaller issues can tolerated. This demand is currently underserved as coding is somewhat expensive and focused on critical functions.

What are some examples of when buggy code can be tolerated?

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#313

Post by simonw »

htrp wrote: post #305
simonw wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the whole thing or just the headline? What did you think of my list of characteristics of "good code"?

What are you thinking about for the new best practices for software engineering?

That's the question I'm hoping to answer as I write the rest of this guide, which I expect to take several months: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/23/agentic-engineering-pa...

I'm not sure anyone has a confident answer to that yet though - I certainly don't.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#314

Post by hnthrow0287345 »

kakacik wrote: post #296
ap99 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code has a generation cost and a maintenance cost. If you just look at generation then sure it's super cheap now. If you look at maintenance, it's still expensive. You can of course use AI to maintain code, but the more of it there the more unwieldy it gets to maintain it even with the best models and harnesses.

I 'love' that folks are seemingly inching slowly towards more acceptance of crappy llm code. Because it costs marginally less to produce to production if you just pass some smoke tests? Have we not learned anything about technical debt and how it bites back hard? Its not even seniority question, rather just sane rational approach to our craft unless one wants to jump companies every few months like a toxic useless ap…

People aren't interested in long-term thinking when companies are doing layoffs for bullshit reasons and making vague threats about how most of us will have to go find a new career which causes a heck of a lot of stress and financial costs. That isn't being petty, it's having self-respect. They get the quality when the companies treat the craftspeople with respect.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#315

Post by simonw »

Retr0id wrote: post #312
heisenbit wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is demand for non scalable, not committed to be maintained code where smaller issues can tolerated. This demand is currently underserved as coding is somewhat expensive and focused on critical functions.

What are some examples of when buggy code can be tolerated?

If the code is being used by a small group of people who are willing to figure out and share workarounds for those bugs - internal staff, for example.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#316

Post by MagicMoonlight »

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…

No. They’re great at slopping out a demo, but god help you if you want minor changes to it. They completely fall apart.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#317

Post by dktp »

Retr0id wrote: post #312
heisenbit wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is demand for non scalable, not committed to be maintained code where smaller issues can tolerated. This demand is currently underserved as coding is somewhat expensive and focused on critical functions.

What are some examples of when buggy code can be tolerated?

From recent personal examples

We have a somewhat complicated OpenSearch reindexing logic and we had some issue where it happened more regularly than it should. I vibecoded a dashboard visualizing in a graph exactly which index gets reindexed when and into what. Code works, a little rough around the edges. But it serves the purpose and saved me a ton of time

Another example, in an internal project we made a recent change where we need to send specific headers depending on the environment. Mostly GET endpoint where my workflow is checking the API through browser. The list of headers is long, but predetermined. I vibecoded an extension that lets you pick the header and allows me to work with my regular workflow, rather than Postman or cURL or whatever. A little buggy UI, but good enough. The whole team uses it

I'm not a frontend developer and either of these would take me a lot of time to do by hand

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#318

Post by neilwilson »

ap99 wrote: post #291
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…

Code has a generation cost and a maintenance cost. If you just look at generation then sure it's super cheap now. If you look at maintenance, it's still expensive. You can of course use AI to maintain code, but the more of it there the more unwieldy it gets to maintain it even with the best models and harnesses.

Once writing code is cheap you don't maintain code. You regenerate it from scratch.

What you maintain is the specification harness, and change that to change the code.

We have to start thinking at a higher level, and see code generation in the same way we currently see compilation.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#319

Post by samusiam »

animal531 wrote: post #260

Here's an easy to understand example. I've been playing EvE Online and it has an API with which you can query the game to find information on its items and market (as well as several other unrelated things). It seems like a prime example for which to use AI to quickly generate the code. You create the base project and give it the data structures and calls, and it quickly spits out a solution. Everything is great so f…

Did you tell it to consider future usage? Have you tried using it to find and remove dead code? In my experience you can get very good code if you just do a few passes of AI adversarial reviews and revisions.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#320

Post by pdhborges »

zozbot234 wrote: post #256
bfbf wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

You need to have the AI write an increasingly detailed design and plan about what to code, assess the plan and revise it incrementally, then have it write code as planned and assess the code. You're essentially guiding the "Thinking" the AI would have to perform anyway. Yes, it takes more time and effort (though you could stop at a high-level plan and still do better than not planning at all), but it's way better tha…

The problem is those plans become huge. Now I have to review a huge plan and the comparatively short code change.
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