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Writing code is cheap now

simonwillison.net

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Re: Writing code is cheap now

#361

Post by AyanamiKaine »

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?

This what I really wonder, what is even the cost of code? Or what is real code quality.

I know that things like “clean code” exists but I always felt that actual code quality only shows when you try adding or changing existing code. Not by looking at it.

And the ability to judge code quality on a system scale is something I don’t think LLMs can do. But they may support developers in their judgment.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#362

Post by nikolasdimi »

Not sure if “code has always been expensive” is the right framing.

Typing out a few hundred lines of code was never the real bottleneck. What was expensive was everything around it: making it correct, making it maintainable (often underestimated), coordinating across teams and supporting it long term.

You can also overshoot: Testing every possible path, validating across every platform, or routing every change through layers of organizational approval can multiply costs quickly. At some point, process (not code) becomes the dominant expense.

What LLMs clearly reduce is the short-term cost of producing working code. That part is dramatically cheaper.

The long-term effect is less clear. If we generate more code, faster, does that reduce cost or just increase the surface area we need to maintain, test, secure, and reason about later?

Historically, most of software’s cost has lived in maintenance and coordination, not in keystrokes. It will take real longitudinal data to see whether LLMs meaningfully change that, or just shift where the cost shows up.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#364

Post by vips7L »

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.…

> 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)

Even my seniors are just copy pasting out whatever Claude says. People are naturally lazy, even if they know what they’re doing they don’t want to expend the effort.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#365

Post by djb_hackernews »

dirkc wrote: post #273
djb_hackernews wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you familiar with the cathedral vs the bazaar?

To some extent, although I've never read the actual text. Care to elaborate, I don't want to infer things on your behalf?

Curious if your mental model is similar or how you see them being different.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#366

Post by bsenftner »

simonw wrote: post #301
bsenftner wrote: post #300

This is such a surface level take, it's embarrassing. Unless he's talking about the impression in society, but he is not. Writing code is a social act even though few actually read it the code, they experience the result of that code. Maybe, just maybe Simon means "code is disposable now", because some shortcut taker can spin up an apparent duplicate by coaxing and pleading with AI. That is not a future worth partici…

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

I re-read to make sure I was not reacting off the cuff. Your list of good code practices is obvious what we want, but that is not going to happen with the way you describe working with AIs.

You don't seem to be aware of cognitive load; when you say:

"any time our instinct says "don't build that, it's not worth the time" fire off a prompt anyway, in an asynchronous agent session where the worst that can happen is you check ten minutes later and find that it wasn't worth the tokens."

That is going to fracture a person's understanding, leading to mentally fatigue them. People, and I see this coming from you too Simon, seem to be treating software development like it's a sprint, when it is absolutely a marathon. One that requires consideration before acting, and now with LLMs the common act of figuring it out along the way is now dangerous because they will happily guide one to create a CMS when all they want is a one off function.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#368

Post by vips7L »

g_b wrote: post #224
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…

> Do current LLM based agents generate code which is easy to change? They do. I am no longer writing code, everything I commit is 100% generated using an agent. And it produces code depending on the code already in my code-base and based on my instructions, which tell it about clean-code, good-practices. If you don't get maintainable code from an LLM it's for this reason: Garbage in, garbage out.

Doesn’t this preclude that you already know how to produce good code? How will anyone in the future do this when they haven’t actually programmed?

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#369

Post by bsenftner »

simonw wrote: post #313
htrp wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simon, I'd be interested in a voice conversation with you on this topic. I've developed my own chain-of-thought system that is very different from what others are doing. Mine is a Socrate Agent that leads the developer, does not write their code, but guides them to become a better developer. It completely opposite the direction the larger industry seems to be going. Augmented synergy between the AI and developer, not the AI coding and the human overseeing.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#370

Post by Havoc »

ap99 wrote: post #290
Havoc wrote: post #288

Partially why I’m surprised there isn’t more focus on coding harnesses that lean towards strong typing / testing / quasi formal verification type paradigms If you could funnel it through something like that then the ability to generate vast amounts of code is a lot more commercially useful

100% This is what explains the difference in using apps like Claude Code versus almost any other harness/wrapper. And the model can be the same, but if the harness sucks then the usefulness of the harness+model tanks. It's like harness * model = usefulness.

Can’t say I’ve notice much of a difference switching from CC to opencode?
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