I'm actively watching understanding slip away from developers, code review getting paired down to no comment checkmarks, and codebases go to bloated messes that nobody can read. Axioms like engineers must understand and take responsibility for the code they ship are getting torn down, and the products coming out are reflecting conway's law, becoming impenetrably obtuse and always "so complex there are no obvious deficiencies" (as opposed to "so simple there are no obvious deficiencies" which used to be the aim).
The one thing plan mode helped is for the humans to get an understanding of the strategy, and be able to poke around and look at the design and architecture. You can achieve this with some self discipline and keeping shorter leashes on agents, but it feels like a losing battle. The best devs still put out good code, but the poor devs are learning nothing while their metrics look great. I can't help but think we are racking up immense amounts of debt that will very soon become due.
Unfortunately what's happening is people just can't help themselves. Just like an addict reaching for another hit, it's really difficult to make yourself do work when you could just not. I've said it before but LLMs are our cigarettes. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
These comments are so bizarre when we are what, 1-2 years away from AGI?
Like - you really think models won't be able to clean up the tech debt they created!? They are very good at this already. Ask Opus 5.5 to clean up the tech debt from some Opus 4.6 vibe coded app.
Code is cheap now. The most important thing is to ship, ship, ship. If you are handwringing over "tech debt" you have already lost - and you deeply misunderstand how good this technology is getting!
Did I say anything about tech debt? What's the point of "ship, ship, ship" if AI will be able to do it in a couple of years? Don't you see where this is going? We're rapidly losing our ability to think.
The point of "ship, ship, ship" is to cash in (in terms of your career or company) before AGI renders you jobless.
If we get to post-scarcity you never needed the money. But if we end up in some dystopian hellhole where people have no jobs but capitalism still exists, you'll be thankful.
We get it, the future can't come fast enough for you. Code is a commodity and the only important thing is scale. Congratulations on leapfrogging the midwits on the path to the C-suite!
How many people on HN work on mission critical systems? The discussion is not currently constrained to that. I agree, but the exception proves the rule.
The fundamentals of writing correct code have become dramatically cheaper by orders of magnitude. I have been involved in hiring dozens of developers. Fable/Opus 5.5 would be a superior drop-in replacement for perhaps 75% of those hires at roughly 1/100 the cost.
Perhaps for writing generic websites and boilerplate.
I work in embedded systems where it's harder to offload the burden of testing. There is also generally more legacy code, so experienced developers can be costly to replace.
AI makes some things easier, but costs have certainly not fallen by 2 orders of magnitude.
taurath · · focus · HN ↗
The one thing plan mode helped is for the humans to get an understanding of the strategy, and be able to poke around and look at the design and architecture. You can achieve this with some self discipline and keeping shorter leashes on agents, but it feels like a losing battle. The best devs still put out good code, but the poor devs are learning nothing while their metrics look great. I can't help but think we are racking up immense amounts of debt that will very soon become due.
globular-toast · · focus · HN ↗
solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
Like - you really think models won't be able to clean up the tech debt they created!? They are very good at this already. Ask Opus 5.5 to clean up the tech debt from some Opus 4.6 vibe coded app.
Code is cheap now. The most important thing is to ship, ship, ship. If you are handwringing over "tech debt" you have already lost - and you deeply misunderstand how good this technology is getting!
globular-toast · · focus · HN ↗
solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
If we get to post-scarcity you never needed the money. But if we end up in some dystopian hellhole where people have no jobs but capitalism still exists, you'll be thankful.
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
high_5 · · focus · HN ↗
solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
bob1029 · · focus · HN ↗
solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
And even in these systems AI will be better than humans at finding issues.
not_kurt_godel · · focus · HN ↗
t0mpr1c3 · · focus · HN ↗
I work in embedded systems where it's harder to offload the burden of testing. There is also generally more legacy code, so experienced developers can be costly to replace.
AI makes some things easier, but costs have certainly not fallen by 2 orders of magnitude.