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Writing code is cheap now

simonwillison.net

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Re: Writing code is cheap now

#351

Post by saezbaldo »

agentultra wrote: post #328

Each line of code is a liability. I think it’s funny that we’re all measuring lines of code now and smiling. It was/is expensive because engineers are trying to manage the liability exposure of their employers. Agents give us a fire hose of tech debt that anyone can point at production. I don’t think the tool itself is bad. But I do think people need to reconsider claims like this and be more careful about building s…

This is the under-discussed part. We spent decades building authorization layers around code deployment -- review gates, CI checks, staging, rollback. That infrastructure exists because code changes are high-consequence operations that compound.

"Code is cheap" means generation is cheap. But the authorization to ship it remains expensive for very good reason. Removing the generation bottleneck without replacing the judgment layer is a control gap, not a productivity gain.

The parallel is giving someone a master key because they're fast at opening doors. Speed was never the constraint that justified the lock.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#352

Post by saezbaldo »

gormen wrote: post #143

The cost of code never lived in the typing — it lived in the intent, the constraints, and the reasoning that shaped it. LLMs make the typing cheap, but they don’t make the reasoning cheap. So the economics shift, but the bottleneck doesn’t disappear.

Agree, and I'd add: the feedback loop between decision and consequence got dramatically shorter. You can test an architectural hypothesis in hours instead of weeks. That part is genuinely powerful.

But faster feedback also means bad decisions propagate faster. The skill isn't generating three implementations in parallel -- it's knowing which one won't page you at 3am. That judgment comes from having been paged at 3am enough times to recognize the patterns.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#353

Post by nthj »

lp4v4n wrote: post #349
gchamonlive wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think code was always expensive. If it seemed cheap, the cost was hidden somewhere else. When I started coding professionally, I joined a team of only interns in a startup, hacking together a SaaS platform that had relative financial success. While we were very cheap, being paid below minimum wage, we had outages, data corruption, db wipes, server terminations, unresolved conflicts making their way to production an…

So code was apparently cheap, but in fact it was expensive because it was low quality. Now with LLMs, code is cheap and it also has quality, therefore "quality code can be had in the cheap". Do you really believe this is the case? Why don't companies fire all their developers if they can have an algorithm that can output cheap and quality code?

We didn’t fire all our developers when we invented compilers either, and for much the same reason we didn’t stop hiring laborers when we first built ships and established overseas trade routes: business will always expand to meet its reach

Many enterprises are currently exploring to see if they can invite developers to leverage AI tools—like they leveraged the compiler—to be more productive. To operate on a higher plane of agency, collaborating on what we should be building and not just technical execution. Those actively hostile or just checked out with the idea of relearning skills are being laid off. (Some unprofitable business sections are being swept up opportunistically too.) The idea that all developers would be fired if AI tools can write good code doesn’t meet the lessons of history

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#354

Post by lp4v4n »

fragmede wrote: post #350
lp4v4n wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So code was apparently cheap, but in fact it was expensive because it was low quality. Now with LLMs, code is cheap and it also has quality, therefore "quality code can be had in the cheap". Do you really believe this is the case? Why don't companies fire all their developers if they can have an algorithm that can output cheap and quality code?

I don't know if you've heard, but there have been a large number of layoffs in the tech sector recently. Whether they're actually related to AI as executives claim, and not section 174 of the US IRS tax code in the BBB, is known only to them, but if your argument hinges on people having not been fired when there have been layoffs, you may need a different one.

As you said, it's impossible to determine how many of the current layoffs are caused by AI, they probably also have a lot to do with the broader economic downturn. But you’re still missing the point, if companies truly have a black box that can produce cheap, high‑quality code as the GP put it, why don't they just fire 95% of their developers and keep only a small core of AI orchestrators?

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#355

Post by zozbot234 »

pdhborges wrote: post #320
zozbot234 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It shouldn't be any longer than the actual code, just have it write "easy pseudocode" and it's still something that you can audit and have it translate into actual coding.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#356

Post by skydhash »

nthj wrote: post #353
lp4v4n wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So code was apparently cheap, but in fact it was expensive because it was low quality. Now with LLMs, code is cheap and it also has quality, therefore "quality code can be had in the cheap". Do you really believe this is the case? Why don't companies fire all their developers if they can have an algorithm that can output cheap and quality code?

We didn’t fire all our developers when we invented compilers either, and for much the same reason we didn’t stop hiring laborers when we first built ships and established overseas trade routes: business will always expand to meet its reach Many enterprises are currently exploring to see if they can invite developers to leverage AI tools—like they leveraged the compiler—to be more productive. To operate on a higher pl…

> Many enterprises are currently exploring to see if they can invite developers to leverage AI tools—like they leveraged the compiler—to be more productive. To operate on a higher plane of agency, collaborating on what we should be building and not just technical execution.

The thing is, developers have been hired to automate process, and as for any professional doing a good job, that means the output should perform reliably. But now they are forcing us to use a tools that everyone knows is not reliable, but the onus is still on us to keep the same reliability. So do you see why we are not thrilled?

It’s like providing a faulty piano (that shuffles the notes when a key is pressed) and expecting a good rendition of the Moonlight Sonata.

Or a crane that will stall and drop its load randomly. It would have been sent to the scrapyard on the first day.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#357

Post by Majromax »

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…

> Have we not learned anything about technical debt and how it bites back hard?

I think LLMs are changing the nature of technical debt in weird ways, with trends that are hard to predict.

I've found LLMs surprisingly useful in 'research mode', taking an old and badly-documented codebase and answering questions like "where does this variable come from, and what are its ultimate consumers?" Its answers won't be as natural as a true expert's, but its answers are nonetheless useful. Poor documentation is a classic example of technical debt, and LLMs make it easier to manage.

They're also useful at making quick-and-dirty code more robust. I'm as guilty as anyone else of writing personal-use bash scripts that make all kinds of unjustified assumptions and accrete features haphazardly, but even in "chat mode" LLMs are capable of reasonable rewrites for these small problems.

More systematically, we also see now-routine examples of LLMs being useful at code de-obfuscation and even decompilation. These forward processes maximize technical debt compared to the original systems, yet LLMs can still extract meaning.

Of course, we're not now immune to technical debt. Vibe coding will have its own hard-to-manage technical debt, but I'm not quite sure that we have the countours well defined. Anecdotally, LLMs seem to have their biggest problem in the design space, missing the forest of architecture for the trees of implementation such that they don't make the conceptual cuts between units in the best place. I would not be so confident as to call this problem inherent or structural rather than transitory.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#359

Post by HWR_14 »

FrojoS wrote: post #188
HWR_14 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this were to work, could theoretically make nice revenue and it shouldn't show up in any metric anywhere. Except production GDP, the standard measure of economic activity.

Correct me, but if two people create a SAAS that can replace a 50 people SAAS, compete on price and the competitor is forced out of the market, wouldn’t this show up as an reduction in GDP? Efficiency (GDP/time_worked) should be up though, and AFAIK it isn’t.

Yes, when prices of goods and services go down so will GDP. I've not seen evidence of the prices of SaaS going down in the past few years.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#360

Post by skydhash »

simonw wrote: post #315
Retr0id wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aren’t you also paying internal staff for their time. Waisting their time is waisting your money.
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