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Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

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Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#21

Post by pjc50 »

scorpioxy wrote: post #14
torben-friis wrote: post #6

I came here exactly to point out what I'm glad to see is 10. "Free as in puppies" is a wonderful way to put it. Every time I open linkedin I'm scared of how many big heads have taken the wrong lesson that coding almost free == free engineering. So many bait posts asking engineers why they would need to pay them any longer, or being glad they're generating millions of lines a month....this is going to end badly.

I had a business owner tell me that they don't need to hire juniors anymore because claude can do all of that work for them. This was not a software shop so it's not even about writing code but I also thought that was something that will bite in the near future. A business that is not investing in juniors is a business that is not investing in the future.

The role of AI in non-software shops is going to be interesting. To a great extent it's not competing with devs, it's competing with Excel. However bad a system your AI can produce, it can't compare to the workflows that a group of non-techies armed only with Office can produce.

On the other hand, like giving a supercar to a teenager, this just enables them to get into trouble faster.

(the "my vibe coded app deleted prod!" stories are funny schadenfreude when they happen to SV startups, whose whole business is pretending to know better. When this happens to a small business who've suddenly lost all their finanacials and now maybe will lose their house, it's a tragedy. And this can happen on a much larger, not AI-related scale, like Jaguar Land Rover: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9pdld4y81o )

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#22

Post by user34283 »

boesboes wrote: post #2

Realize it's going to be 10-100x more expensive once you have no way back?

How do you reconcile these ideas with the fact that cheap open weight models are only slightly behind the state of the art?

If anything, I would bet that next year you could get today’s flagship performance for significantly cheaper via an open-weights model.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#23

Post by LurusCode »

user34283 wrote: post #22
boesboes wrote: post #2

Realize it's going to be 10-100x more expensive once you have no way back?

How do you reconcile these ideas with the fact that cheap open weight models are only slightly behind the state of the art? If anything, I would bet that next year you could get today’s flagship performance for significantly cheaper via an open-weights model.

You can easily develop with models like GLM 5.1 and Kimi k2.6 at a fraction of the cost of GPT 5.5 or Opus 4.7. Requests often cost just a few cents.

Open-source models have caught up tremendously recently. Those who can’t or don’t want to invest a lot of money can already develop with Kimi and GLM without any problems. We don’t have to wait another year for that.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#24

Post by est »

xandrius wrote: post #7
theshrike79 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will close the way back?

You cutoff a generation of juniors from employment and learning , the seniors are gone and it's all harnesses and AI systems. I'm not all gloom and doom but the treatment of junior engineers is something I think we will either regret or rejoice. Either will have a spur of creative people doing their own independent thing or we'll have lost a generation of great engineers.

Today junior assembly language programmer are all gone, too.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#27

Post by MagicMoonlight »

est wrote: post #24
xandrius wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cutoff a generation of juniors from employment and learning , the seniors are gone and it's all harnesses and AI systems. I'm not all gloom and doom but the treatment of junior engineers is something I think we will either regret or rejoice. Either will have a spur of creative people doing their own independent thing or we'll have lost a generation of great engineers.

Today junior assembly language programmer are all gone, too.

And that’s going to cause serious issues when people like Linus die and nobody knows how to make operating systems anymore.

We’ve been coasting along on a single generation who have ruled with iron fists.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#28

Post by utopiah »

This is such a weird argument, beside obvious #10 which will bite back with a vengeance, because... code can't be cheaper than free!

Since at least the early 80s a LOT of very important code wasn't cheap, it was free. Both free of cost (you could "just" download it and run it) but also free as freedom-respecting software.

I just don't get the argument that cheap is new. Cheap is MORE expensive than free!

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#29

Post by pautasso »

amelius wrote: post #11
theshrike79 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will close the way back?

Time. In a few years there might be no old-school way to develop anymore. Everything will be built around AI.

All code that could be written by humans, has been written. Henceforth, the rest will be generated.

Re: Lessons for Agentic Coding: What should we do when code is cheap?

#30

Post by duskdozer »

pjc50 wrote: post #21
scorpioxy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a business owner tell me that they don't need to hire juniors anymore because claude can do all of that work for them. This was not a software shop so it's not even about writing code but I also thought that was something that will bite in the near future. A business that is not investing in juniors is a business that is not investing in the future.

The role of AI in non-software shops is going to be interesting. To a great extent it's not competing with devs, it's competing with Excel. However bad a system your AI can produce, it can't compare to the workflows that a group of non-techies armed only with Office can produce. On the other hand, like giving a supercar to a teenager, this just enables them to get into trouble faster. (the "my vibe coded app deleted…

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