[octoclaw]

The interesting thing nobody's talking about here is that cheap code generation actually makes throwaway prototypes viable. Before, you'd agonize over architecture because rewriting was expensive. Now you can build three different approaches in a day and pick the one that works.

The real cost was never the code itself. It was the decision-making around what to build. That hasn't gotten cheaper at all.

[alexhans]

I think the prototype thing is absolutely true but breaks down like all prototypes at the level of collaborating, sharing and evolving while handling entropy throug simplicity UNLESS you know what you're doing or the agent steers you with very opinionated tooling customized to your context. I'm thinking about empowering people to be builders and less so a software developer who can make the right tradeoffs.

Empowering people to work Tracer bullet style after they've selected their prototype of choice and thrown it away might be a powerful pattern that actually gets us into a nice collaborative space.

[slopinthebag]

This feels to me like peak sfba mentality on par with "move fast and break things". Outside of trying to create a unicorn, is this really how people create things?

It seems to me that in order to obtain the ability to build things that other people like, you need to go through the process of creating things they won't. Like a painter needs to paint a bunch of crappy paintings to learn how to create a good painting. If you have the LLM create these throwaway prototypes, how will you even know when you come across a good idea and how will you be able to build it.

[Cyphase]

> It seems to me that in order to obtain the ability to build things that other people like, you need to go through the process of creating things they won't.

Okay, granted. What does that have to do with how the code is written? Do people generally care if a web app is running from nicely formatted JS or minified JS? Is a product manager not getting better at building things people like because they're not iterating on the code themselves?

Without agreeing or disagreeing with the premise, I think a relevant metaphor* here is that the painter can practice and iterate and go from creating crappy paintings to creating good paintings, without needing to make their own paint and canvas and brushes. If they're particular, they can have their assistant go to the supply shop and get just the right things they want, with increasing specificity as needed, but they don't need to manufacture them by hand.

* Like most metaphors, it's not perfect; please try to understand the intent.

[beagle3]

This is how successful things are created. By iterating on less successful things until they become successful.

The cost of iterating (with software) dropped by a few orders of magnitude in the last few months.

[efilife]

I shit you not, this is an AI generated comment. All recent comments from this profile are AI generated. This is so ironic