$85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable • Hacker News Board

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#31

Post by jdjdkrjdjjdj » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 7:56 AM UTC

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #30

vivzkestrel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- wrong comparison - ever heard the word called threshold? there is always a threshold for everything in this universe - when you say i dont need to manually do math anymore because i use a calculator, the threshold for offloading your thinking is very very low - when you say i dont need assembly language anymore because i learnt python, once again the threshold for offloading your thinking to an external source is v…

It was a yes or no question. You didn't answer it.

Look my point here is not to troll. My point here is to make you think. I learnt assembly and I never want to do it again, I learnt to code in many languages (compiled and interpreted) and you know what, there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself).

Now the change from assembly to compiled languages was a step change. The same is true now. What was once hard is now easy. And again we must adapt.

For you I think your identity has been tied up in being good at what you do ... I was the same... The issue is now, that we need to find something harder to fill our minds...

Finally, I want to remind you that at one point in our history a computer was a job. I think programmer/software engineer is going the same way.

In 10 years I hope we are not doing the same mundane crap as what we were .. There are so many other interesting things we could be filling our brains with!!!

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#32

Post by wonnage » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #31

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a yes or no question. You didn't answer it.

Look my point here is not to troll. My point here is to make you think. I learnt assembly and I never want to do it again, I learnt to code in many languages (compiled and interpreted) and you know what, there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself). Now the change from assembly t…

You created a throwaway to “not troll” and post the same three tired tropes every tokenmaxxing vibe coder trots out

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#33

Post by NewsaHackO » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:02 AM UTC

I wonder how much he burned on this article.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#34

Post by justinclift » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:04 AM UTC

altmanaltman wrote: post #26

justinclift wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people think programmers working in such industries have no oversight and can ship whatever they want and however they want? I've worked in those industries, and there's a large gap between the theory of what you're saying vs the practical reality when the CxO suite are pushing AI on everyone. :(

:( indeed if that's the case

Unfortunately, it is the case. And I fully agree with you.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#35

Post by sevenseacat » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:18 AM UTC

siren2026 wrote: post #23

This article is very long with almost no content. Except "spending more tokens is good". Obviously the author got something to sell us.

They went from 20-30 merged PRs a week to 150! What's in them? Who knows, no-one has read any of them

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#36

Post by vivzkestrel » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:29 AM UTC

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #31

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a yes or no question. You didn't answer it.

Look my point here is not to troll. My point here is to make you think. I learnt assembly and I never want to do it again, I learnt to code in many languages (compiled and interpreted) and you know what, there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself). Now the change from assembly t…

- to answer your question, i did not start with assembly

- i started in 2010s with c++ directly but I did go back and learn how to do 8086 opcodes and while i am not good at it, i am still learning it slowly

- mundane stuff? algorithms, business logic, critical thinking, architectural understanding is being outsourced to LLMs at an unprecedented rate and there is nothing mundane about any of this

- you can sit and talk about how 10 yrs down the line everyone has to sit and write english paragraphs of how they want their website to look like and nobody needs to write code but I am going to have to back out of this one

- Writing code from requirements is an art as much as a critical skill and bringing an LLM to do so doesnt bode well for the entire industry

- Remember that concept of smart terminals and dumb terminals that used to be discussed about long time back. How dumb terminals merely offloaded everything to the server while they did nothing.

- Frontier labs are turning humans into dumb terminals while they wield data, power and critical thinking from the masses at scale

- This kinda power and leverage should not be handed out especially to frontier labs controlled by a few people

- Even if you are one of those few insightful people out there who will sit and actually discuss what the function should do and then review the generated code, vast majority of programmers are literally copy pasting vibe coding stuff day in and day out now

- This ll create a special type of deficiency a few years down the line in every major corporation out there while concentrating even more power into the hands of a few frontier labs

- Remember that meme image of an ape slowly evolving into a human and the in the last step, it says "oops we need to turn back one step". This honestly is that one step. I think the software industry has taken a messy step here

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#37

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:32 AM UTC

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #18

vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- i swear to god it has been 3 years since LLMs came out - i still have no idea what people are running for more than 5 mins - if you are sitting and writing 20000 page requirement documents for your next project and having agentic AI agents create the whole damn project from scratch, you are doing it all wrong - you ll end up eroding all your skills that translate requirements to code and worse you are dependent on…

[flagged]

I actually ended up learning a little assembly (Knuth's new one MMIX) and it's actually been a really useful skill, as it gives me a (lot) more sympathy for the machine.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#38

Post by customguy » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #18

vivzkestrel wrote: post #17

- i swear to god it has been 3 years since LLMs came out - i still have no idea what people are running for more than 5 mins - if you are sitting and writing 20000 page requirement documents for your next project and having agentic AI agents create the whole damn project from scratch, you are doing it all wrong - you ll end up eroding all your skills that translate requirements to code and worse you are dependent on…

[flagged]

Apples and oranges, since there is not determinism. That this argument gets trotted out so often is part of the dumbing down IMO.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#39

Post by Stitch4223 » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:53 AM UTC

Let’s screw some numbers to make your Codex subscription look as impressive.

By spending on the $200 plan, you get 20x the amount of tokens. So effectively $4,000 if you’d buy it at the worst way possible. Now do so for a year: $48,000 on tokens.

To reach the conclusion of the article, you could just also have used the free tier.

“Was it worth it? My current productivity is simply beyond the reach of old unassisted development techniques. I feel there's no going back in that sense.”

Money spent versus value gained seems pretty low.

Re: $85,000 in tokens later: What I learned from scaling agentic coding at Lovable

#40

Post by discreteevent » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 9:06 AM UTC

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #31

jdjdkrjdjjdj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a yes or no question. You didn't answer it.

Look my point here is not to troll. My point here is to make you think. I learnt assembly and I never want to do it again, I learnt to code in many languages (compiled and interpreted) and you know what, there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself). Now the change from assembly t…

> there has not been an issue i found that required me to dig into the assembly of a compiled language (there are edge cases if there was a compiler bug, but I have not seen them myself).

The compiler did exactly what you said because the programming language forced you to be exact. There was no room for misunderstanding.

This will never be the case with an LLM even if it becomes infallible (it won't). It's you who is fallible and sloppy until you force yourself to be precise. A programming language can help with that.