A lot of assets require regular maintenance to keep working well, but that doesn't make them a liability.
I think the main point (written again and again) is that more code = more liability, and since AI generates a lot of code, it generates a lot of liability. It might have been better to lean on the AI thing in the title.
But it's kind of a weird thing to say that code is not an asset unless you're leaning heavily into pulling that AI rant into the mix.
This isn't a particularly new idea. The main thing being that you should consider the amount of code written to achieve something to be part of the cost of having that capability, and minimizing that cost is valuable. The mark of an effective system to me is how much capability it gives its users for how much burden it places on those maintaining it, and burden correlates well with the amount of code in the system.
(This is mainly something that's useful to consider in organizations which a lot of programming resource, as a way to counter the tendancy for them to consider the amount of code they are producing as a measure of their productivity, when often they could be better served by reducing the amount of code they write and focusing on producing better code or even removing existing code. AI tends to make this problem worse, but it's not the original cause of it)
Some of the analogies are a bit strained, but I'm in agreement.
Every line of code is technical debt - all of it. The engineering responsibility is to minimize the rate you pay on the debt, and to make its eventual renegotiation cheaper.
It's a liability management exercise that goes on as long as you want to use your system as a working asset.
Bang on. We'll start seeing the AI story become increasingly about addressing this particular issue in the coming year. I expect the mainstream talking point will be around codebases that can be rewritten instantly when the world changes under them, thus making code ephemeral and not a liability.
altmanaltman|1 month ago
That makes little sense.
A lot of assets require regular maintenance to keep working well, but that doesn't make them a liability.
I think the main point (written again and again) is that more code = more liability, and since AI generates a lot of code, it generates a lot of liability. It might have been better to lean on the AI thing in the title.
But it's kind of a weird thing to say that code is not an asset unless you're leaning heavily into pulling that AI rant into the mix.
rcxdude|1 month ago
(This is mainly something that's useful to consider in organizations which a lot of programming resource, as a way to counter the tendancy for them to consider the amount of code they are producing as a measure of their productivity, when often they could be better served by reducing the amount of code they write and focusing on producing better code or even removing existing code. AI tends to make this problem worse, but it's not the original cause of it)
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
kayo_20211030|1 month ago
Every line of code is technical debt - all of it. The engineering responsibility is to minimize the rate you pay on the debt, and to make its eventual renegotiation cheaper.
It's a liability management exercise that goes on as long as you want to use your system as a working asset.
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
demorro|1 month ago