[stephenlf]

> The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero

Didn’t realize this was science fiction.

[geetee]

I appreciate the author making that the first sentence.

[AstroBen]

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

[KronisLV]

> 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:

  A) de-valuation of software development work in well-explored domains (and perhaps some changes in regards to outsourcing, as long as cultural and communication differences can be compensated for); with the implications for those learning programming now
  B) the squeeze coming in the other direction, making inference 3-5x more expensive, though maybe not with how every big org out there is trying to be a loss leader

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.

[bopbopbop7]

I think the author forgot that code has to compile and be useful.

And how much is technical debt worth?

[simonw]

What coding agent are you using where the code doesn't even compile!?

[canadiantim]

Depends if I can bundle the technical debt, get a triple AAA rating on it and then sell it

[heliumtera]

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.

[dt3ft]

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?

[ThrowawayR2]

Good grief, it's like watching people consuming Soylent meal substitute shakes and proclaiming that chefs and cooking are obsolete.

[bopbopbop7]

Because who cares about correct and compilable code, any code will do!

[autoexec]

> 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