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0 pointsarkensaw5mo ago0 comments

> It's pretty clear to me where this is going. The only question is how long it takes to get there.

I don't think its a guarantee. all of the things it can do from that list are greenfield, they just have increasing complexity. The problem comes because even in agentic mode, these models do not (and I would argue, can not) understand code or how it works, they just see patterns and generate a plausible sounding explanation or solution. agentic mode means they can try/fail/try/fail/try/fail until something works, but without understanding the code, especially of a large, complex, long-lived codebase, they can unwittingly break something without realising - just like an intern or newbie on the project, which is the most common analogy for LLMs, with good reason.

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namrog845mo ago· 4 in thread

While I do agree with you. To play the counterpoint advocate though.

What if we get to the point where all software is basically created 'on the fly' as greenfield projects as needed? And you never need to have complex large long lived codebase?

It is probably incredibly wasteful, but ignoring that, could it work?

fwip5mo ago

That sounds like an insane way to do anything that matters.

Sure, create a one-off app to post things to your Facebook page. But a one-off app for the OS it's running on? Freshly generating the code for your bank transaction rules? Generating an authorization service that gates access to your email?

The only reason it's quick to create green-field projects is because of all these complex, large, long-lived codebases that it's gluing together. There's ample training data out there for how to use the Firebase API, the Facebook API, OS calls, etc. Without those long-lived abstraction layers, you can't vibe out anything that matters.

theshrike795mo ago

In Japan buildings (apartments) aren't built to last forever. They are built with a specific age in mind. They acknowledge the fact that houses are depreciating assets which have a value lim->0.

The only reason we don't do that with code (or didn't use to do it) was because rewriting from scratch NEVER worked[0]. And large scale refactors take massive amounts of time and resources, so much so that there are whole books written about how to do it.

But today trivial to simple applications can be rewritten from spec or scratch in an afternoon with an LLM. And even pretty complex parsers can be ported provided that the tests are robust enough[1]. It's just a metter of time someone rewrites a small to medium size application from one language to another using the previous app as the "spec".

[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

[1] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/15/porting-justhtml/

3 more replies

techblueberry5mo ago

I don't think so. I don't think this is how human brains work, and you would have too many problems trying to balance things out. I'm thinking specifically like a complex distributed system. There are a lot of tweaks and iterations you need for things to work with eachother.

But then maybe this means what is a "codebase". If a code base is just a structured set of specs that compile to code ala typescript -> javascript. sure, but then, it's still a long-lived <blank>

But maybe you would have to elaborate on, what does "creating software on the fly" look like,. because I'm sure there's a definition where the answer is yes.

damethos5mo ago

I have the same questions in my head lately.

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