Comment by lukevdp
2 days ago
I don't think the same things that help humans help agents. Simplicity helps humans, for agents parsing complexity is a breeze.
Not saying code quality isn't important - it is. But I think what is described as quality code will change.
Agents still pay a penalty for complexity even if it is a smaller one.
Parsing single file is easier than navigating a file system for an LLM. Until the models have context windows large enough to hold the entire codebase in one shot, single files will beat multiple files every time.
This. I suspect the codebases in the future will be made of a small number of gigantic source files. These will be able to be transpiled into a more human friendly that produces multiple smaller files per big file in human-debug mode.
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