This is so exactly right and I've been saying it to whoever will put up with me...(and now am embarrassed I have no link to show for it. oh well, shame is good for writing. envy too!) Software production is now so easy that everything is a .emacs file (pronounced "dot emacs" btw): meaning, each individual has their own entirely personal, endlessly customizable software cocoon. As tptacek says in the OP, it's "easier…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47393437
I would add to that a few more open questions that I haven't seen addressed:
- As more engineers (and non-engineers) pick up coding agents, everyone is authenticating multiple MCPs, creating an n * n explosion of complexity that is impossible to centralise. Multiply this by the number of distinct coding agents for every platform and visibility is very tough. A lot of platforms also don't support scopes so you can't enforce safety short of a network proxy I suppose
- For non-developers mainly, lacking mental models such as for Y desktop app does not imply that there is a local LLM running on your machine. I suppose it's a question of trust and education versus starting conservative and progressively onboarding where we're more of the former.
- We talk a bit about the idea of sharing prompts but that fundamentally a prompt does not in itself contain quality. I've had internal tools I've made where it's mentioned that Claude made it when I mean, yes to a degree but I did many iterations using my own taste to refine things and held opinions about how things should operate. Giving someone a prompt won't inherently guarantee anything of quality. I often think about the idea of ie; give a screenshot of Github to an LLM but in a way, you're saying to create a clone, not of what exists today but is a dead echo of the design taste and choices made years ago that persist today. You can create things cheaply but without taste and good judgment, how can you continue to evolve it in a way that isn't like that draw the rest of the horse meme.
- I personally wonder about tokenmaxxing stories you hear about from other companies and like, logically what happens to glue roles? Does someone like a Microsoft just stack rank on token count and fire those who actually get work done? I suppose they already hollow out knowledge anyway so maybe it's nothing new.
- Definitely the thing with internal tooling where eventually you generate so much that you fundamentally have no mental model. It's fine for non-critical stuff and I'm kind of coming around to the idea that it's actually a better position to have no idea of the code and a strong "theory" of how a thing should work than it is to fully understand the code and have zero "theory". Ideally both of course.
Anyway, this isn't a comprehensive ramble but I've also been a bit disappointed that there hasn't been more talk about the second order effects. Many things can be true at once where you can see value in LLMs while still being critical of them and the whole DC situation ie; Colossus 1 etc.