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Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

blog.alaindichiappari.dev

351–360 of 611 posts

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#351
I had called this a while back, since the reasoning is simple: frameworks primarily exist to minimize boilerplate, but AI is very good at boilerplate, so the value of frameworks is diminished.

The larger underlying shift is that the economics of coding have been upended. Since its inception, our industry has been organized around one fundamental principle: code is expensive because coders are expensive. This created several complex dynamics, one which was frameworks -- which are massive, painful dependencies aimed at alleviating costs by reducing the repeated boilerplate written by expensive people. As TFA indicates, the costs of frameworks in terms of added complexity (e.g. abstractions from the dependency infecting the entire codebase) are significant compared to their benefits.

But now that the cost of code ---> 0, the need for frameworks (and reusability overall) will likely also --> 0.

I had predicted that this dynamic will play out widely and result in a lot more duplicative code overall, which is already being borne out by studies like https://www.gitclear.com/ai_assistant_code_quality_2025_rese...

Our first instinct is to recoil and view this as a bad thing, because it is considered "Tech Debt." But as the word "debt" indicates, Tech Debt is yet another economic concept and is also being redefined by these new economics!

For instance, all this duplicate code would have been terrible if only humans had to maintain it. But for LLMs, it is probably better because all the relevant logic is RIGHT THERE in the code, conveniently colocated with the rest of the functionality where it is used, and not obfuscated behind a dozen layers of abstraction whose (intended) functionality is described in natural language scattered across a dozen different pieces of documentation, each with varying amounts of sufficiency, fidelity and updated-ness. This keeps the context very focused on the relevant bits, which along with extensive testing (again, because code is cheap!) that enables instant self-checking, greatly amplifies the accuracy of the LLMs.

Now, I'm not claiming to say this will work out well long term -- it's too early to tell -- but it is a logical outcome of the shifting economics of code. I always say with AI, the future of coding will look very weird to us; this is another example of it.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if all you ask it to do is fix bugs. You can also ask it to work on code health things like better organization, better testing, finding interesting invariants and enforcing them, and so on. It's up to you what you want to prioritize.

I agree but want to interject that "code organization " won't matter for long. Programming Languages were made for people. I'm old enough to have programmed in z80 and 8086 assembler. I've been through plenty of prog.langs. through my career. But once building systems become prompting an agent to build a flow that reads these two types of excels, cleans them,filters them, merges them and outputs the result for the we…

Will you trust code like this to run airplanes?

Remember, even Waymo has a ton of non-AI code it is built upon. We will still have PyTorch, embedded systems software, etc.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#353

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

I give a year, the realization would be brutal.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#354
post #29

It's strange to me when articles like this describe the 'pain of writing code'. I've always found that the easy part. Anyway, this stuff makes me think of what it would be like if you had Tolkein around today using AI to assist him in his writing. 'Claude, generate me a paragraph describing Frodo and Sam having an argument over the trustworthiness of Gollum. Frodo should be defending Gollum and Sam should be on his s…

Your last sentence describes my thoughts exactly. I try to incorporate Claude into my workflow, just to see what it can do, and the best I’ve ended up with is - if I had written it completely by myself from the start, I would have finished the project in the same amount of time but I’d understand the details far better. Even just some AI-assisted development in the trickier parts of my code bases completely robs me o…

Then you are using it the wrong way

Driving is a skill that needs to be learnt, same with working with agents.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#355
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that it's going to be the opposite. At re:Invent, one of the popular sessions was in creating a trio of SRE agents, one of which did nothing but read logs and report errors, one of which did analysis of the errors and triaged and proposed fixes, and one to do the work and submit PRs to your repo. Then, as part of the session, you would artificially introduce a bug into the system, then run into the bug…

> one to do the work and submit PRs to your repo Have we not seen loads of examples of terrible AI generated RPs every week on this site?

Because nobody posts the good ones. They're boring, correct, you merge them and move on to the next one. It's like there's a murder in the news every day but generally we're still all fine.

Don't assume that when people make fun of some examples that there aren't thousands more that nobody cares to write about.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#356
post #341
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice that AI can fix bugs fast, but it's better to not even have bugs in the first place. By using someone else's battle tested code (like a framework) you can at least avoid the bugs they've already encountered and fixed.

I spent Dry January working on a new coding project and since all my nerd friends have been telling me to try to code with LLM's I gave it a shot and signed up to Google Gemini... All I can say is "holy shit, I'm a believer." I've probably got close to a year's worth of coding done in a month and a half. Busy work that would have taken me a day to look up, figure out, and write -- boring shit like matplotlib illustra…

I'm (mostly) a believer too, and I think AI makes using and improving these existing frameworks and libraries even easier.

You mentioned matplotlib, why does it make sense to pay for a bunch of AI agents to re-invent what matplotlib does and fix bugs that matplotlib has already fixed, instead of just having AI agents write code that uses it.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with both you and the GP. Yes, coding is being totally revolutionized by AI, and we don't really know where the ceiling will be (though I'm skeptical we'll reach true AGI any time soon), but I believe there still an essential element of understanding how computer systems work that is required to leverage AI in a sustainable way. There is some combination of curiosity of inner workings and precision of thought…

I can see why people are skeptical devs can be 10x as productive. But something I'd bet money on is that devs are 10x more productive at using these tools.

Id wager my life savings that devs aren’t even 1.5x more productive using these tools.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#358
"Why do you ever need, for most of the use cases you can think of, a useless, expensive, flawed, often vulnerable framework, and the parade of libraries that comes with it, that you probably use for only 10% of its capabilities?"

Who outside of 'frontend web developers' actually do this?

I don't think this is a good description of, say, Apache Tika or Alembic's Ash.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#359

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

The future is already here. Been working a few years at a subsidiary of a large corporation where the entire hierarchy of companies is pushing AI hard, at different levels of complexity, from office work up through software development. Regular company meetings across companies and divisions to discuss methods and progress. Overall not a bad strategy and it's paying dividends. A experiment was tried on a large and ve…

> I wonder if the LLMs "converge" on a particular UI if not given specific instructions?

Purple. They really fucking like this purple gradient background for some reason lol.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if all you ask it to do is fix bugs. You can also ask it to work on code health things like better organization, better testing, finding interesting invariants and enforcing them, and so on. It's up to you what you want to prioritize.

I have some healthy skepticism on this claim though. Maybe, but there will be a point of diminishing returns where these refactors introduce more problems than they solve and just cause more AI spending. Code is always a liability. More code just means more problems. There has never been a code generating tool that was any good. If you can have a tool generate the code, it means you can write something on a higher le…

"What can we do to reduce the size of the codebase" seems like an interesting prompt to try.
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