Discussion

Code Is Cheap Now, And That Changes Everything

otabdeveloper4: Shit code was always cheap, this is why "technical debt" exists as a concept.

tovej: I would question the framing that code is not cheap now. That's not really meaningful. What is the cost most associated with software? Maintenance.Considering that, I would say a much more accurate statement is that sub-prime technical debt is now easy to take on.I'm surprised at the low quality of the grifting comments in this thread. I have a feeling that the vibe coding enjoyers used to at least make defensible statements. Now it's just pure hype. Seems like we're in the SBF being lauded for FTX part of the bubble.

dist-epoch: > Developers who learn to specify, verify, and iterate will thrive.This will last for about one year.From next year agents will be prompting themselves. Human developers will have approximately zero economic value.

d0100: AI assisted development is the generalists dreamAlthought is still hasn't solved procrastinating the next plan prompt

bwestergard: Have you seen the meme with three spidermen, labeled "Designer", "Product Manager", and "Engineer" wherein each is pointing to the other two and saying "I don't need you anymore!"?Most of the time, the person saying that is wrong.

voidUpdate: Code is cheap, as long as you ignore the knock-on effects on RAM prices, storage prices, environmental costs, the fact that people are still burning thousands of dollars on tokens...

kjksf: This is not first time in history that RAM prices spiked.And it'll be resolved the same way all others were.demand > supply => higher prices => incentive to produce more => produce more => supply > demand => lower pricesThe drastic drop in price of code is permament.

voidUpdate: How long does it take to spin up enough completely new chip fabs to supply the demand?

croes: Prompting themselves to do what?

dist-epoch: specify, verify, iterate

nicpottier: > This isn’t a minor detail, it’s the core constraint that shaped virtually every habit and institution in our industry.I am so so tired of this turn of phrase in LLM created content. I guess I don't know for sure whether this article was LLM written but I suspect so. Or, scarier still we are changing our own writing to match this slop.

xienze: I find it amusing that software developers have no issue with having an LLM churn out slop code but have such a visceral reaction to slop articles.

philipov: You are falling into the trap of thinking there's a single monolithic being called Software Developers that has inconsistent opinions. In fact, you're observing different people with conflicting values.

xienze: Yeah yeah. But LLMs certainly have been embraced by a large number of developers. Many of whom I've observed react with disgust when they see "not X, but Y" or emdashes in an article. But when it comes to code, "wow this is so awesome!"

twosdai: Found this really well written. I really enjoyed reading it, and found myself agreeing with a lot of it.I wish the author wrote more about the day 2 problem cases with AI built applications. It somewhat matters what the programming language is, the architecture and design for debugging and reasoning verification when we want to alter the system specification.Basically as a Dev, or "Owner" of the application, we are responsible for the continuous changes and updates to the system. Which I've found hard to reason about in practice when speaking to other people, if I dont know the code explicitly.

qazxcvbnmlp: They allude to it, but I think one of the new skills that will be valuable is reasoning about systems where you don't know the code. This is what “owners” and managers who don’t touch code do today.

Madmallard: This isn't really a thing. You can't create an accurate 4K image from a low res JPG. Owners and managers who don't touch code don't know shit and have to go to the developers to learn about important decisions made in the application and how they work in detail.

croes: Owners and managers will believe the AI companies that AI can create an accurate 4K image from a low res JPG.

bushido: Interestingly, they landed on a conclusion which I have often argued against these days [0]. Code is absolutely cheap, and previously, it was the most important resource that we guarded.Entire job descriptions and functions were built to guard the engineer's time. Product owners, product managers, customer success, etc., all shielded the engineers who produced code because that was the scarcest resource.With that scarcity gone, we really need to be thinking about the entire structure differently. I'm definitely in the we still need people camp. The roles are wildly different, though. We can't continue doing the same job that we did with a slight twist.[0] https://dheer.co/gatekeeping-on-a-different-stage/

datadrivenangel: I partially disagree for two reasons:1. Code is absolutely cheap, but good, correct, non-vulnerable code is much cheaper than it was a few years ago but is still not free, especially in a large application.2. Requirements management is less important when the cost of software is lower because iteration is cheaper, but bad customer communication can absolutely result in negatively useful software, and there is a skill to understanding what people want and need that takes a lot of time to use well, so in many cases a product manager can still help do useful work... most won't though.

ChrisArchitect: Related from Simon in February:Writing code is cheap nowhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125374

bushido: That's partly the harness for me. I do believe product managers are still important, but they're important in deciding what gets shipped, not what gets built.Engineers are still important. They're important in building the harness to ensure that anything which is being built/shipped is of sufficient quality.In my opinion, testing/QA/etc is now the core product.But the best code that you'll get is literally connecting to the pain point the customer was saying to the agentic workflow that is building your product.Bad customer communication in my experience is the result of every person who handled the convo pre-engineers posturing the message trying to make sure the next person is motivated to get it to the next gatekeeper.This is all very biased based on my own workflow though.

kjksf: I have no issue with with code generated by e.g. Claude because it's not "slop".On average, it's probably better than the code I would write.I say "on average" because AI doesn't make stupid mistakes, doesn't invert logical conditions. I know I do. Which I eventually fix, but it's better to not make them in the first place, hence "on average".And in cases that AI doesn't generate code up to my quality standards, I re-prompt it until it does. Or fix it myself.I'm not a hapless victim of AI. I'm a supervisor. I operate a machine that generates good code most of the time but not all of the time. I'm there to spot and correct the "not all of the time" cases.

xienze: But that's my point. LLMs generate good prose "most of the time", certainly better than most people are capable of doing. Yet we frequently react with disgust when we see tell-tale signs of LLM-generated text in articles. Why? Because it indicates the person was probably too lazy to write it themselves and are simply chucking a half-formed thought over the wall? Why don't we hold generated code to the same standard?

fxtentacle: Code is not cheap. It's just heavily subsidised with VC money. But that won't last forever.Uber Eats also used to be dirt cheap. Surprise! it's not anymore.And even if you just pay API prices for Opus - as opposed to using a subsidized subscription - you can easily reach the point where the tokens for AI-generated code become comparable in price to just paying a junior dev salary for a manual implementation. AI is great for greenfield projects, where there is little to no existing context. But on real codebases, people memorize large parts of it. That allows them to navigate files with 100k+ tokens in them. (Wherease the Opus API will charge you $2.5 for each time the model runs through 100k thinking tokens reviewing your file.)But what AI can imitate pretty well is the result of having a clueless middle-manager review your code. So my prediction would be that the AI "revolution" will slim out management layers before it'll reach actual developers.

ieie3366: Hardware has always gotten cheaper every year, and always will. You will be able to run Opus 4.6 tier models locally with junkyard hardware in 2035.

Pwntastic: Citation needed. Hardware prices have gone up substantially in the past year.

ieie3366: "global warming is not real because it's really cold today"

But this isn’t really about AI enthusiasm or AI scepticism. It’s about industrialisation. It has happened over and over in every sector, and the pattern is always the same: the people who industrialise outcompete those who don’t. You can buy handmade pottery from Etsy, or you can buy it mass-produced from a store. Each proposition values different things. But if you’re running a business that depends on pottery, you’d better understand the economics.

kranner: Towards the end this article contradicts itself so severely I don't think a human wrote this.But this isn’t really about AI enthusiasm or AI scepticism. It’s about industrialisation. It has happened over and over in every sector, and the pattern is always the same: the people who industrialise outcompete those who don’t. You can buy handmade pottery from Etsy, or you can buy it mass-produced from a store. Each proposition values different things. But if you’re running a business that depends on pottery, you’d better understand the economics.So which is it?Will an industrialised process always outcompete a pre-industrial process? Or do they not compete at all, because they value different things?

jubilanti: And why are they talking about Etsy as if it doesn't bring in $2+ billon in revenue?

kjksf: The comparison valid for his example would be to compare revenues from mass produced pottery vs. revenues of handmade pottery sold on etsy.Methinks that mass produced pottery makes more than $2 billion and etsy pottery is a tiny fraction of overall etsy sales.

kjksf: Do you disagree with his analogy?Hand made pottery cannot compete on price with industrially made pottery and therefore majority of pottery is made industrially.100% human written code cannot compete on price with AI assisted code and therefore majority of code will be written with assistance of AI.The aside about etsy handmade pottery is that because they can't compete with industrially made pottery on price so they were killed in mass market pottery products and had to find a tiny niche. Before industrialization handmade pottery was mass market pottery. It was outcompeted in mass market and had to move into a niche.And that part of doesn't even translate into code. People are not buying lines of code, so you're not going to be buying handmade code.Handmade pottery can offer variety (designs) not available in mass produced pottery. When you look at software, you can't tell if it was 100% handwritten or written with assistance of AI.