6 ms·

> Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. Code is not an asset it's a liability, and co

> Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. Code is not an asset it's a liability, and code that no one has reviewed is even more of a liability. However, in the end, execution is all that matters so if you and your cofounder are able to execute successfully with mountains of generated code then it doesn't matter what assets and liabilities you hold in the short term. The long term is a lot harder to predict in any case.

_vertigo 9mo ago
> Code is not an asset it's a liability, and code that no one has reviewed is even more of a liability. Code that solves problems and makes you money is by definition an asset. Whether or not the code in question does those things remains to be seen, but code is not strictly a liability or else no one would write it.
- merlincorey 9mo ago
  "Code is a liability. What the code does for you is an asset." as quoted from https://wiki.c2.com/?SoftwareAsLiability https://wiki.c2.com/?SoftwareAsLiability with Last edit December 17, 2013. This discussion and distinction used to be well known, but I'm happy to help some people become "one of today's lucky 10,000" as quoted from https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ because it is indeed much more interesting than the alternative approach.
  - sswatson 9mo ago
    It’s well known and also wrong. Delta’s airplanes also require a great deal of maintenance, and I’m sure they strive to have no more than are necessary for their objectives. But if you talk to one of Delta’s accountants, they will be happy to disabuse you of the notion that the planes are entered in the books as a liability.
    - kortilla 9mo ago
      Delta leases a big portion of its fleet, which makes your example pretty bad.
      - simonsmithies 9mo ago
        Not a terrible example. The planes delta owns are delta’s assets; the planes the leasing company owns are the leasing company’s assets. The point is, the code and the planes are assets despite the maintenance required to keep them in revenue-generating state.
    - OneMorePerson 9mo ago
      It's possible for something to be both an asset and a potential liability, it isn't strictly one or the other.
    - _heimdall 9mo ago
      You're hinting at the underlying problem with the quote. "Asset" in the quote reads, at least to me, in the financial or accounting meaning of the term. "Liability" reads, again to me, in the sense of potential risk rather than the financial meaning. Its apples and oranges.
      - Ygg2 9mo ago
        Liability is also an economic term. As in, "The bank's assets (debt) are my liability, and my assets (house) are the bank's liability." I don't think it's a wrong quote. Code's behavior is the asset, and code's source is the liability. You want to achieve maximum functionality for minimal source code investment.
        _heimdall 9mo ago
        Sorry, my point wasn't that liability doesn't have a meaning in finance. My read of the quote is that it uses liability in the sense of risk not debt on a balance sheet. I could always be wrong though, that was just my interpretation of it. I don't get how code could be a liability in the financial sense, but I do get how every line of code risks bugs and other issues.
  - jvanderbot 9mo ago
    Code requires maintenance, which grows with codebase size, minus some decay over time. (LLMs do not change this, and might actually be more sensitive to this), So increasing code size, esp with new code, implies future costs, which meets the definition of a liability on a LOC kinda-sorta-basis. It's not right but it's not wrong either. It at least was a useful way to think about code, and we'll see if that applies in LLM era.
- tom_m 9mo ago
  Not a very valuable one. Never had been. That's the funny part. So many people want software but then don't know what to do once they have it.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
wouldbecouldbe 9mo ago
Developers that can’t see the change are blind. Just this week, sun-tue. I added a fully functional subscription model to an existing platform, build out a bulk async elasticjs indexing for a huge database and migrated a very large Wordpress website to NextJS. 2.5 days, would have cost me at least a month 2 years ago.
- fxtentacle 9mo ago
  To me, this sounds like: AI is helping me solve all the issues that using AI has caused. Wordpress has a pretty good export and Markdown is widely supported. If you estimate 1 month of work to get that into NextJS, then maybe the latter is not a suitable choice.
  - tengbretson 9mo ago
    To me, this sounds like: If AI was good at a certain task then it was a bad task in the first place. Which is just run of the mill dogmatic thinking.
  - serf 9mo ago
    it's wild that somehow with regards to AI conversations lately someone can say "I saved 3 months doing X" and someone can willfully and thoughtfully reply "No you didn't , you're wrong." without hesitation. I feel bad for AI opponents mostly because it seems like the drive to be against the thing is stronger than the drive towards fact or even kindness. My .02c: I am saving months of efforts using AI tools to fix old (PRE-AI, PREHISTORIC!) codebases that have literally zero AI technical debt associated to them. I'm not going to bother with the charts & stats, you'll just have to trust me and my opinion like humans must do in lots of cases. I have lots of sharp knives in my kitchen, too -- but I don't want to have to go slice my hands on every one to prove to strangers that they are indeed sharp -- you'll just have to take my word.
    - jbgt 9mo ago
      Slice THEIR hands. They might say yours are rigged. I'm a non dev and the things I'm building blow me away. I think many of these people criticizing are perhaps more on the execution side and have a legitimate craft they are protecting. If you're more on the managerial side, and I'd say a trusting manager not a show me your work kind, then you're more likely to be open and results oriented.
Zababa 9mo ago
>Code is not an asset it's a liability This would imply companies could delete all their code and do better, which doesn't seem true?
- thehappypm 9mo ago
  A more accurate description of code is that it’s a depreciating asset, perhaps, or an asset that requires maintenance cost. Neither of which is a liability

_vertigo 9mo ago

> Code is not an asset it's a liability, and code that no one has reviewed is even more of a liability. Code that solves problems and makes you money is by definition an asset. Whether or not the code in question does those things remains to be seen, but code is not strictly a liability or else no one would write it.

merlincorey 9mo ago
"Code is a liability. What the code does for you is an asset." as quoted from https://wiki.c2.com/?SoftwareAsLiability https://wiki.c2.com/?SoftwareAsLiability with Last edit December 17, 2013. This discussion and distinction used to be well known, but I'm happy to help some people become "one of today's lucky 10,000" as quoted from https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ because it is indeed much more interesting than the alternative approach.
- sswatson 9mo ago
  It’s well known and also wrong. Delta’s airplanes also require a great deal of maintenance, and I’m sure they strive to have no more than are necessary for their objectives. But if you talk to one of Delta’s accountants, they will be happy to disabuse you of the notion that the planes are entered in the books as a liability.
  - kortilla 9mo ago
    Delta leases a big portion of its fleet, which makes your example pretty bad.
    - simonsmithies 9mo ago
      Not a terrible example. The planes delta owns are delta’s assets; the planes the leasing company owns are the leasing company’s assets. The point is, the code and the planes are assets despite the maintenance required to keep them in revenue-generating state.
  - OneMorePerson 9mo ago
    It's possible for something to be both an asset and a potential liability, it isn't strictly one or the other.
  - _heimdall 9mo ago
    You're hinting at the underlying problem with the quote. "Asset" in the quote reads, at least to me, in the financial or accounting meaning of the term. "Liability" reads, again to me, in the sense of potential risk rather than the financial meaning. Its apples and oranges.
    - Ygg2 9mo ago
      Liability is also an economic term. As in, "The bank's assets (debt) are my liability, and my assets (house) are the bank's liability." I don't think it's a wrong quote. Code's behavior is the asset, and code's source is the liability. You want to achieve maximum functionality for minimal source code investment.
      - _heimdall 9mo ago
        Sorry, my point wasn't that liability doesn't have a meaning in finance. My read of the quote is that it uses liability in the sense of risk not debt on a balance sheet. I could always be wrong though, that was just my interpretation of it. I don't get how code could be a liability in the financial sense, but I do get how every line of code risks bugs and other issues.
- jvanderbot 9mo ago
  Code requires maintenance, which grows with codebase size, minus some decay over time. (LLMs do not change this, and might actually be more sensitive to this), So increasing code size, esp with new code, implies future costs, which meets the definition of a liability on a LOC kinda-sorta-basis. It's not right but it's not wrong either. It at least was a useful way to think about code, and we'll see if that applies in LLM era.
tom_m 9mo ago
Not a very valuable one. Never had been. That's the funny part. So many people want software but then don't know what to do once they have it.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

wouldbecouldbe 9mo ago

Developers that can’t see the change are blind. Just this week, sun-tue. I added a fully functional subscription model to an existing platform, build out a bulk async elasticjs indexing for a huge database and migrated a very large Wordpress website to NextJS. 2.5 days, would have cost me at least a month 2 years ago.

fxtentacle 9mo ago
To me, this sounds like: AI is helping me solve all the issues that using AI has caused. Wordpress has a pretty good export and Markdown is widely supported. If you estimate 1 month of work to get that into NextJS, then maybe the latter is not a suitable choice.
- tengbretson 9mo ago
  To me, this sounds like: If AI was good at a certain task then it was a bad task in the first place. Which is just run of the mill dogmatic thinking.
- serf 9mo ago
  it's wild that somehow with regards to AI conversations lately someone can say "I saved 3 months doing X" and someone can willfully and thoughtfully reply "No you didn't , you're wrong." without hesitation. I feel bad for AI opponents mostly because it seems like the drive to be against the thing is stronger than the drive towards fact or even kindness. My .02c: I am saving months of efforts using AI tools to fix old (PRE-AI, PREHISTORIC!) codebases that have literally zero AI technical debt associated to them. I'm not going to bother with the charts & stats, you'll just have to trust me and my opinion like humans must do in lots of cases. I have lots of sharp knives in my kitchen, too -- but I don't want to have to go slice my hands on every one to prove to strangers that they are indeed sharp -- you'll just have to take my word.
  - jbgt 9mo ago
    Slice THEIR hands. They might say yours are rigged. I'm a non dev and the things I'm building blow me away. I think many of these people criticizing are perhaps more on the execution side and have a legitimate craft they are protecting. If you're more on the managerial side, and I'd say a trusting manager not a show me your work kind, then you're more likely to be open and results oriented.

Zababa 9mo ago

>Code is not an asset it's a liability This would imply companies could delete all their code and do better, which doesn't seem true?

thehappypm 9mo ago
A more accurate description of code is that it’s a depreciating asset, perhaps, or an asset that requires maintenance cost. Neither of which is a liability