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Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

martinalderson.com

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Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#681

Post by jakubmazanec »

adriand wrote: post #640
bonesss wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religions are about faith, faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Engineering output is tangible and measurable, objectively verifiable and readily quantifiable (both locally and in terms of profits). Full evidence, testable assertions, no faith required. Here we have claims of objective results, but also admissions we’re not even tracking estimations and are terrible at making them when we do. People are notori…

Here's an example from this morning. At 10:00 am, a colleague created a ticket with an idea for the music plugin I'm working on: wouldn't it be cool if we could use nod detection (head tracking) to trigger recording? That way, musicians who use our app wouldn't need a foot switch (as a musician, you often have your hands occupied). Yes, that would be cool. An hour later, I shipped a release build with that feature fu…

> An hour later, I shipped a release build

I would love to see that pull request, and how readable and maintainable the code is. And do you understand the code yourself, since you've never done this before?

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#682

Post by jonfw »

hackernewds wrote: post #613
jonfw wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have not started working on a new codebase while adopting AI, it may be harder to realize the gains. I switched jobs somewhat recently. At my previous job, where I was on the codebase for years, I knew where the changes should be and what they should look like. So I tried to jump directly to implementation with the AI because I didn't need much help planning and the AI got confused and did an awful job. In a n…

You are discounting his experience with your own, while your example is not remotely relevant to his flask game example.

It sounded like he was trying to one shot things when he mentioned he would ask it to fix problems with no luck. It's an approach I've tried before with similar results, so I was sharing an alternative that worked for me. Apologies if it came across as dismissive

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#683

Post by blobbers »

mrsubletbot wrote: post #518
theshrike79 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt and a bit nihilistic: I get paid to ship features. Client wants a feature EoW, they get it EoW, they're not paying for a week of extra work for the "quality codebase" feature. But the good thing is that we've had objective and automated tooling for quality checks for code. We used to use them for humans, but now we apply the same tools for AI. Good unit testing practices, exhaustive linters, .editorconfig…

Maintaining a quality code base is more than just having tests and linters. It's about organization, right-sized abstractions, architecture and choosing the right patterns. There is no real way to automate the verification of these things. If an agent farts out a 2,000 LOC feature in a day but bifurcates the code base, duplicates functions or makes awful abstractions, it WILL eventually turn into a big ball of mud. A…

I suspect you haven't worked with agents enough. Start trying! You'll see...

In the age of agents.md files, you direct the agents style, organization and architectural choices. If you thought you were a coder, and a good one, your skill is useless. You now need to be an architect and a manager.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#684

Post by aeonfox »

theshrike79 wrote: post #494
aeonfox wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to test out the OP articles theory, I was about to write some unit tests. I decided to let Opus 4.5 have a go. It did a pretty good job, but I spent probably as much time parsing what it had done as I would have writing the code from scratch. I still needed to clean it up, and of course, unsurprisingly, it had made a few tests that only really exercised the mocking it had made. A kind of mistake I wouldn't be ca…

This is only true if the code it wrote is something you can just sit down and write without any reference. Now do something like I did: An application that can get your IMDB/Letterboxd/Goodreads/Steam libraries and store them locally (own your data). Also use OMDB/TMDB to enrich the movie and TV show data. If you can write all that code faster than read what Claude did, I salute you and will subscribe to your Substac…

> If you can write all that code faster than read what Claude did

I think you need to parse my comment a little more keenly ;)

> The Steam API access Claude one-shotted (with Sonnet 3.7, this was a long time ago) as well as enriching the input data from different sources.

This story isn't different to the usual "I made a throw-away thing with an LLM and it was super useful and it took me no time at all". It's very different to the OP stating you can throw this at mature or legacy codebases and reduce labour inputs by 90%. If the correctness of the code matters (which it will as the codebase grows), you still need to read the code, and that still takes human eyes.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#685

Post by aeonfox »

benjiro wrote: post #505
aeonfox wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to test out the OP articles theory, I was about to write some unit tests. I decided to let Opus 4.5 have a go. It did a pretty good job, but I spent probably as much time parsing what it had done as I would have writing the code from scratch. I still needed to clean it up, and of course, unsurprisingly, it had made a few tests that only really exercised the mocking it had made. A kind of mistake I wouldn't be ca…

That is the thing ... How long ago did we get Agent mode. Like in CoPilot that thing is only 7 months old. Things evolve faster then people realize... Agent mode, then came mcp servers, sub agents, now its rag databases allowing the LLMs to get data directly. The development of LLMS looks slow but with each iteration, things get improved. As yourself, what will have been the result of those same tests you ran, 21 mon…

I can't say my opinion has changed. It didn't give me results that more exciting or useful than Sonnet. Is it worth 3x price per token? I'm not so sure.

(It wasn't clear in my comment, but I already use agents for my code. I just think the OPs claims are overblown.)

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#686

Post by xtracto »

tangotaylor wrote: post #498

> Engineers need to really lean in to the change in my opinion. I tried leaning in. I really tried. I'm not a web developer or game developer (more robotics, embedded systems). I tried vibe coding web apps and games. They were pretty boring. I got frustrated that I couldn't change little things. I remember getting frustrated that my game character kept getting stuck on imaginary walls and kept asking Cursor to fix it…

How are you guys using LLMs? I've done a couple of applications for my own use, including a "Mexican Train Dominoes" online multiplayer using LLMs and it doesn't stop amazing me, Gemini 3 is crazy good at finding bugs at work, And every week there are very interesting advances in Arxiv articles.

I'm 45 years old, have been programming since I was 9, and this is the most amazing time to be building stuff.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#687

Post by xnx »

tangotaylor wrote: post #498

> Engineers need to really lean in to the change in my opinion. I tried leaning in. I really tried. I'm not a web developer or game developer (more robotics, embedded systems). I tried vibe coding web apps and games. They were pretty boring. I got frustrated that I couldn't change little things. I remember getting frustrated that my game character kept getting stuck on imaginary walls and kept asking Cursor to fix it…

Don't be put off forever by one bad experience with Cursor. Gemini 3 would likely yield much better results now.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#688

Post by RScholar »

digitalsushi wrote: post #570
r_lee wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These posts like the one OP made is why I'm losing my mind. Like, is there truly an agentic way to go 10x or is there some catch? At this point while I'm not thrilled about the idea of just "vibe coding" all the time, I'm fine with facing reality. But I keep having the same experience as you, or rather leaning more on that supercharged Google/SO replacement or just a "can you quickly make this boring func here that d…

does anyone remember that episode of star trek tng where the kid is given a little laser engraver that carves a dolphin from a block of wood? and the kid is like "i didn't make this" and the teacher (who abducted him, ew) is like "yeah but it's what you wanted to make, the tool just guided you" so in 2026 we're going to get in trouble doing code "the old way", the pleasurable way, the way an artist connects with the…

I sure do. I believe it's the first season episode "When the Bough Breaks," (S01E16). That show tackled so many heavy topics right out of the gate... I respect the hell of of the courage to try, even if it produced some pretty epic whiffs along with the home runs and standing doubles.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#689

Post by stocksinsmocks »

welshwelsh wrote: post #670
stocksinsmocks wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is the better value: Hundreds of tests that were written basically for free in a few minutes even though a lot of them are kind of dumb? Or hundreds of tests that were written for a five figure sum that took weeks or months, and only some of them are kind of dumb? If you’re just thinking of code as the end in and of itself, then of course, the handcrafted artisanal product is better. If you think of code like a…

Neither. Tests should be written by developers only when it saves them time. The cost of writing them should be negative. Instead of writing hundreds of useless tests so that the code coverage report shows high numbers, it is better to write a couple dozen tests based on business needs and code complexity.

Having used Bentley software products I can tell you with complete certainty that professional software developers have extremely bad judgment when it comes to the need to test software and verify its functionality. Developers just think they know what they’re doing because there’s typically not a strong feedback mechanism that inflicts serious career damage when they do things that are extremely lazy or stupid or unethical. How many people lost their job or had to change their name and live out the rest of their days in Juarez Mexico over AWS’ incomprehensible configuration causing an internet brown out? Anyone? A teenager serves cold onion rings at a burger joint and he’s on the street. Some lazy dweeb at Amazon blows up the internet and - come on, isn’t it about the friends we made along the way? It’s obscene and the lack of professionalism and accountability is a total disgrace.

Re: Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?

#690

Post by allochthon »

csomar wrote: post #574
r_lee wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These posts like the one OP made is why I'm losing my mind. Like, is there truly an agentic way to go 10x or is there some catch? At this point while I'm not thrilled about the idea of just "vibe coding" all the time, I'm fine with facing reality. But I keep having the same experience as you, or rather leaning more on that supercharged Google/SO replacement or just a "can you quickly make this boring func here that d…

I have been building a game (preview here: https://qpingpong.codeinput.com ) as a practice to "vibe-coding". There is only one rule: I am not allowed to write a single line of code. But can prompt as much as I want. So far I am hitting a "hard-block" on getting the AI to make changes once you have a large code base. One "unblocker" was to restructure all the elements as their own components. This makes it easier for…

I have a hobby project on the side involving radio digital signal processing in Rust that I've been pure vibe coding, just out of curiosity to see how far I can get. On more than one occasion the hobby project has gotten bogged down in a bug that is immensely challenging to resolve. And since the project isn't in an area I have experience with, and since I don't have a solid "theory of the program", since it's a gray box because I've been vibe coding it, I've definitely seen CC get stuck and introduce regressions in tricky issues we previously worked through.

The use of Claude Code with my day job has been quite different. In my day job, I understand the code and review it carefully, and CC has been a big help.

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