Comment by stephenlf
18 days ago
> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero
Didn’t realize this was science fiction.
18 days ago
> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero
Didn’t realize this was science fiction.
I appreciate the author making that the first sentence.
I swear all of these are coming from the prompt "hey chatgpt rewrite this article that got a lot of views"
I've seen non-technical people vibe code with agents. They're capable of producing janky, very basic CRUD apps. Code cost definitely ain't zero
> Didn’t realize this was science fiction.
Compared to my salary, the current cost of the models and tokens to do the work I normally would, is around 10%-25% of it.
Obviously, you still need someone to prevent the models from going insane and messing everything up, but in my experience (webdev projects, DevOps stuff, local software, well known domains), it is very much a force multiplier, as long as you acknowledge that you really need tests and various prebuild scripts.
So I predict one of two things happening:
Either way, it's an interesting direction - instead of ever becoming "proper" engineering (outside of RFCs and foundational stuff), we went from React/Vue/Angular/Svelte/Express.js/Laravel/Django/Rails/ASP.NET/Spring wild west and frameworks of the day (never being able to nail down what "good practices" are and stick to them for decades, but chasing the new thing forevermore), to even closer to producing non-deterministic slop, except that the slop kinda sorta works. Wild times.
I think the author forgot that code has to compile and be useful.
And how much is technical debt worth?
What coding agent are you using where the code doesn't even compile!?
The one that cursor used to build their famous browser.
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Depends if I can bundle the technical debt, get a triple AAA rating on it and then sell it
But it is true, the cost is effectively zero. There will be, for a long time, free models available and any one of them will give you code back, always!
They never refuse. Worst case scenario the good models ask for clarification.
The cost for producing code is zero and code producers are in a really bad spot.
I beg to differ. Let's say you're right. Code producers should turn to agriculture and let their managers and product owners prompt AI to produce code. How about code maintainers? Ever heard the mantra "You build it, you run it"? Lets say that AI can build it. Can it run it though? All alone, safely, securely and reliably? No. It can't. We can keep dreaming though, and when will AI code production services turn profitable? Is there a single one which turned profitable?
There are already agents doing this in SRE roles.
Agents are monitoring metrics and logs. A bug is introduced into the system. Error rates go up and the agents notify diagnostic agents. These agents look at recent commits and figure out the problem. They instruct another agent about how to fix the issue and deploy the change. The problem is fixed before an engineer even has time to start looking at logs.
If you aren’t seeing this, you’re not keeping up with what others are already doing. It’s not just people vibe coding ToDo apps.
Calm down buddy, maybe you're confusing code producers with something else. It's 2026 we don't bother with maintenance no more, we /new to keep context clean and start over. Just don't forget to comment - never delete - old code. Always keep dead code around to please shareholders, line numbers up always. We produce code, that is the main thing, never forget.
One could argue we could achieve the same goals by appending \n to a file in a loop, but this is inefficient nowadays with generous token offerings (but could change in the future than I highly suggest just outputting \n to a file an call it productivity increase)
I didn't understand your point about product owners. Who the fuck would ever need one when code produces itself?
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Good grief, it's like watching people consuming Soylent meal substitute shakes and proclaiming that chefs and cooking are obsolete.
Because who cares about correct and compilable code, any code will do!
Exactly!
> The cost for producing code is zero
Zero as long as your time is worth nothing, and bad code and security issues cost you nothing maybe.
"Getting code" has always been dead simple and cheap. Getting actually good code that works and doesn't turn into a problem for you down the road is the expensive part
> Zero as long as your time is worth nothing
i can't remember who said it but a long time ago i remember reading "Linux is free if your time is worthless". Now we all use Linux one way or the other.
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