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Writing code is cheap now

simonwillison.net

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Re: Writing code is cheap now

#341

Post by kranner »

simonw wrote: post #299
kranner wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was careful to say "Good code still has a cost" ... Misleading headline, with the qualifier buried six paragraphs deep. You have a wide enough readership (and well deserved too). Clickbait tactics feel a little out of place on your blog.

This is the chapter title for a sort-of book I'm working on, and it's the central philosophy I'm building the book around. I'm not going to change a good chapter title (and I do think it's a good chapter title) just because people on Hacker News won't read a few paragraphs of content. A dishonest title would be "Code is cheap now" or "Programming is cheap now". I picked "Writing code is cheap now" to capture that spe…

Fairly esoteric and self-serving definition of "writing code" if it represents just the typing part. I wouldn't call it a dishonest title, but perhaps not a fully honest one either.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#342

Post by [deleted] »

Retr0id wrote: post #312
heisenbit wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is demand for non scalable, not committed to be maintained code where smaller issues can tolerated. This demand is currently underserved as coding is somewhat expensive and focused on critical functions.

What are some examples of when buggy code can be tolerated?

[deleted]

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#343

Post by [deleted] »

gchamonlive wrote: post #335
AyanamiKaine wrote: post #327

> 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. Wasn't writing code always cheap? I see this more like a strawmen argument. What is clean code? Tested code? Should each execution path of a function be tested with each possibl…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#344

Post by throwaway27448 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #332
AyanamiKaine wrote: post #327

> 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. Wasn't writing code always cheap? I see this more like a strawmen argument. What is clean code? Tested code? Should each execution path of a function be tested with each possibl…

> Wasn't writing code always cheap? No. If you’re a startup that wanted to ship your product, you were stuck hiring developers and waiting 6 months. I’m old enough to remember th “6-8 weeks” it was supposed to take to build the first version of Stackoverflow (hint it was more like several months). Creating a v1 of a product / feature is now cheap. When you’re a mature product and need to make complicated / iterative…

Startups, famous for writing clean, quality code.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#345

Post by solumunus »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #344
softwaredoug wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasn't writing code always cheap? No. If you’re a startup that wanted to ship your product, you were stuck hiring developers and waiting 6 months. I’m old enough to remember th “6-8 weeks” it was supposed to take to build the first version of Stackoverflow (hint it was more like several months). Creating a v1 of a product / feature is now cheap. When you’re a mature product and need to make complicated / iterative…

Startups, famous for writing clean, quality code.

Not sure what relevancy that has to what you're responding to.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#346

Post by hiuioejfjkf »

Retr0id wrote: post #312
heisenbit wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is demand for non scalable, not committed to be maintained code where smaller issues can tolerated. This demand is currently underserved as coding is somewhat expensive and focused on critical functions.

What are some examples of when buggy code can be tolerated?

[dead]

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#347

Post by softwaredoug »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #344
softwaredoug wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wasn't writing code always cheap? No. If you’re a startup that wanted to ship your product, you were stuck hiring developers and waiting 6 months. I’m old enough to remember th “6-8 weeks” it was supposed to take to build the first version of Stackoverflow (hint it was more like several months). Creating a v1 of a product / feature is now cheap. When you’re a mature product and need to make complicated / iterative…

Startups, famous for writing clean, quality code.

More like developers - infamous for not writing the shit code needed to test PMF :)

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#348

Post by ryaniscool »

gchamonlive wrote: post #335
AyanamiKaine wrote: post #327

> 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. Wasn't writing code always cheap? I see this more like a strawmen argument. What is clean code? Tested code? Should each execution path of a function be tested with each possibl…

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…

> The thing with coding agents is that it seems now that you can eat your cake and have it too. We are all still adapting, but results indicate that given the right prompts and processes harnessing LLMs quality code can be had in the cheap.

It's cheaper but not cheap

If you're building a variation of a CRUD web app, or aggregating data from some data source(s) into a chart or table, you're right. It's like magic. I never thought this type of work was particularly hard or expensive though.

I'm using frontier models and I've found if you're working on something that hasn't been done by 100,000 developers before you and published to stackoverflow and/or open source, the LLM becomes a helpful tool but requires a ton of guidance. Even the tests LLMs will write seem biased to pass rather than stress its code and find bugs.

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#349

Post by lp4v4n »

gchamonlive wrote: post #335
AyanamiKaine wrote: post #327

> 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. Wasn't writing code always cheap? I see this more like a strawmen argument. What is clean code? Tested code? Should each execution path of a function be tested with each possibl…

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?

Re: Writing code is cheap now

#350

Post by fragmede »

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?

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.
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