Comment by greatvaluebrand

Serious question: how is a consumer of software can I tell that it was written with bad abstractions? Is there a signal that software is well written and maintainable other than very high cost?

I’m willing to believe that software you authored or designed yourself is better than whatever Claude spits out. I’m not as confident that the cost benefit ratio pencils out anymore. In fact, I would say most software does not need to be particularly good or well thought out. The vast majority of things I need software to do for me day-to-day at work are so niche and specialized that I tend to prefer AI slop that I can get now for a few tens of dollars at a time and something expertly crafted by a true artisan for thousands of times higher cost.