6 ms·

Software will be buggier than ever but also way less buggy.

luckystarr 15d ago
Translation: As the number of bugs per line of code is a constant depending on language and project, we will experience a world full of bugs now that LLMs generate so much more code. On the other hand, LLMs are so quick at fixing them, the number of bugs should go down. I wonder which trend will be winning though. I personally won't bet on quality.
unglaublich 15d ago
It's going to be 50% less buggy, but we're going to write 10x as much code too.
alasano 15d ago
Good software will be good-er. Bad software will be nightmare fuel.
- farkerhaiku 15d ago
  bad software will be replacable.
  - pphysch 15d ago
    Bad software, as in stateless programs, doesn't actually matter and never did. They can be replaced trivially. The problem is the real world isn't made of stateless programs, but lots of important data in bespoke formats/schemas, and if you change the shitty software that interacts with the important data, in the wrong way, you can lose everything.
- visarga 15d ago
  > Good software will be good-er. Bad software will be nightmare fuel. We are talking about a moving target here ... they get better every few months, so I expect the super-LLMs from 2035 will write amazing code even with sloppy prompting.
  - lbreakjai 14d ago
    Software engineering has been a thing for decades and you'd still be hard pressed to find two engineers agreeing on what constitutes "good code". It's not a serious discipline, we're closer to bootleggers brewing liquor in a bathtub than we are from anything remotely close to engineers.
    - genidoi 14d ago
      Good code reliably transforms real world state in a desirable way.
- telephone3 14d ago
  Wow, I feel this deeply. I work with bad software. It is bad because people built it using tools that were designed to "make coding easier". I feel a cold chill imagining the level of institutional cruft that could be allowed to build up with unrestrained ai coding. With that said - the process of fixing those old mistakes is greatly aided by llms... but you still need to understand what you are fixing, and understanding why giant blocks of code are copy-pasted everywhere, or why convoluted hacks evolved over time as reactions to bizarre underlying untreated bugs is, imo, ultimately a human/organizational/processes problem. Anyway I think you are bang on.
  - alasano 14d ago
    There's a minimum threshold of knowing what you don't know that's needed I think. Below that the AI will need to get good enough to compensate for people's lack of knowledge. But that will cost money so not sure how it's going to be balanced. I have friends codebases where I had them just run a stupid simple prompt like "spawn subagents to find the top 5 worst issues in this codebase". Wide open APIs allowing anyone to modify the database and charge customers among other things. The mere awareness of needing to secure things is lacking from most vibe coders.
- vablings 15d ago
  I think bad software has the possibility of redemption with rewrites and re-engineering efforts. For those of us who are license locked that's probably never going to benefit us :(
JamesSwift 15d ago
Time-to-fix is lower, but time-to-new-bug is also lower

Translation: As the number of bugs per line of code is a constant depending on language and project, we will experience a world full of bugs now that LLMs generate so much more code. On the other hand, LLMs are so quick at fixing them, the number of bugs should go down. I wonder which trend will be winning though. I personally won't bet on quality.

unglaublich 15d ago

It's going to be 50% less buggy, but we're going to write 10x as much code too.

alasano 15d ago

Good software will be good-er. Bad software will be nightmare fuel.

farkerhaiku 15d ago
bad software will be replacable.
- pphysch 15d ago
  Bad software, as in stateless programs, doesn't actually matter and never did. They can be replaced trivially. The problem is the real world isn't made of stateless programs, but lots of important data in bespoke formats/schemas, and if you change the shitty software that interacts with the important data, in the wrong way, you can lose everything.
visarga 15d ago
> Good software will be good-er. Bad software will be nightmare fuel. We are talking about a moving target here ... they get better every few months, so I expect the super-LLMs from 2035 will write amazing code even with sloppy prompting.
- lbreakjai 14d ago
  Software engineering has been a thing for decades and you'd still be hard pressed to find two engineers agreeing on what constitutes "good code". It's not a serious discipline, we're closer to bootleggers brewing liquor in a bathtub than we are from anything remotely close to engineers.
  - genidoi 14d ago
    Good code reliably transforms real world state in a desirable way.
telephone3 14d ago
Wow, I feel this deeply. I work with bad software. It is bad because people built it using tools that were designed to "make coding easier". I feel a cold chill imagining the level of institutional cruft that could be allowed to build up with unrestrained ai coding. With that said - the process of fixing those old mistakes is greatly aided by llms... but you still need to understand what you are fixing, and understanding why giant blocks of code are copy-pasted everywhere, or why convoluted hacks evolved over time as reactions to bizarre underlying untreated bugs is, imo, ultimately a human/organizational/processes problem. Anyway I think you are bang on.
- alasano 14d ago
  There's a minimum threshold of knowing what you don't know that's needed I think. Below that the AI will need to get good enough to compensate for people's lack of knowledge. But that will cost money so not sure how it's going to be balanced. I have friends codebases where I had them just run a stupid simple prompt like "spawn subagents to find the top 5 worst issues in this codebase". Wide open APIs allowing anyone to modify the database and charge customers among other things. The mere awareness of needing to secure things is lacking from most vibe coders.
vablings 15d ago
I think bad software has the possibility of redemption with rewrites and re-engineering efforts. For those of us who are license locked that's probably never going to benefit us :(

JamesSwift 15d ago

Time-to-fix is lower, but time-to-new-bug is also lower