6 ms·

Code generation is cheap in the same way talk is cheap. Every human can string words together, but there's a world of difference between words that raise $100M

by DrJid 7mo ago

Code generation is cheap in the same way talk is cheap. Every human can string words together, but there's a world of difference between words that raise $100M and words that get you slapped in the face. The raw material was always cheap. The skill is turning it into something useful. Agentic engineering is just the latest version of that. The new skill is mastering the craft of directing cheap inputs toward valuable outcomes.

stackghost 7mo ago
Indeed: The act of actually typing the code into an editor was never the hard or valuable part of software engineering. The value comes from being able to design applications that work well, with reasonable performance and security properties.
- ok123456 7mo ago
  Then why did most software fail to do that even before the advent of LLMs?
  - sethops1 7mo ago
    Because designing systems that work well is difficult. It takes years of experience to develop the muscle memory behind quality systems architecture. Writing the code is an implementation detail (albeit a large one).
  - fxtentacle 7mo ago
    Are we sure it's not failing anymore after the advent of LLMs?
  - stackghost 7mo ago
    Because coding bootcamps and CS programs were churning out squillions of people who could type the code but had poor design and analytical skills, because there was a time where being able to implement Dijkstra on a whiteboard would get you 400k at a FAANG.
    - LtWorf 7mo ago
      And you think these people will now produce better results with the assistance of an LLM that was trained on their work?
      - stackghost 7mo ago
        No, that's the opposite of what I think. Bootcamp grads are basically obsolete now. The real skill has always been the ability to make good design decisions and that's still the case in the LLM era.
        locknitpicker 7mo ago
        > Bootcamp grads are basically obsolete now. I beg to differ. I know for a fact that some companies started hiring people with LLM experience, whose only expertise is spending all Copilot enterprise account tokens on their first week at the job and proceed to whine that the lack of tokens was stifling their creativity. Say what you may about boot camps, but at least the people getting hired could do things and understand what they are doing.
        margorczynski 7mo ago
        > The real skill has always been the ability to make good design decisions and that's still the case in the LLM era. For now maybe yes but the goal is totally removing the human from the decision loop regarding technical stuff.
- simonw 7mo ago
  It wasn't the hard or valuable part of software engineering, but it was a very time-consuming part. That's what's interesting about this new era - the time-consuming-but-easy bit has suddenly stopped being time-consuming.
  - rhubarbtree 7mo ago
    Agreed, often see cope from managers along the line of “writing the code was never the bottleneck”. Well, sure felt like it.
    - LtWorf 7mo ago
      For most people who can type with more than 2 fingers, thinking what to type is slower than typing it.
      - rhubarbtree 7mo ago
        Aha, and AI beats you at both.
  - habinero 7mo ago
    It's not time consuming. It seemed slow because of all the other important parts of the job. People vastly overestimate how much time SWEs actually spend writing code lol
fmbb 7mo ago
Raising $100M doesn’t even mean you have a good idea or an idea people like or an idea you can even make money on.
- arijun 7mo ago
  It’s probably a better indicator of a good business idea than if you get slapped in the face…
  - arghwhat 7mo ago
    And yet, who would you trust more - a CEO that raised 100M on their "vision" or someone who got slapped in the face?
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    A raise is random noise, not signal, based a confidence game within the VC ecosystem. LP capital call->GP gamble based on waves arms around considering VC underperforms as an asset [1] [2] class even when accounting for the grand slam returns. It's 0DTE options gambling dressed up as skill and an art. But, you know [3] [4] [5], lottery still pays out sometimes. TLDR A raise is not robust signal in this regard. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7260137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7260137 [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterjameswalker_most-venture-funds-will-underperform-the-activity-7418729501393870848-Bn1Z/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterjameswalker_most-venture... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
  - LtWorf 7mo ago
    I mean, juicero got the money instead of the slaps in the face it deserved. And there's thousands of startup like that. I think VCs are terrible at picking and a dice would probably do a better job.
dr-detroit 7mo ago
[dead]
kneel25 7mo ago
I think we’re falling into a trap of overestimating the value of incrementally directing it. The output is all coming from the same brain so what stops someone just getting lucky with a prompt and generation that one-shots the whole thing you spent time breaking down and thinking about. The code quality will be the same, and unless you’re directing it to the point where you may as well be coding the old way, the decision-making is the same too.
crystal_revenge 7mo ago
> The new skill is mastering the craft of directing cheap inputs toward valuable outcomes. Strongly agree with this. It took me awhile to realize that "agentic engineering" wasn't about writing software it was about being able to very quickly iterate on bespoke tools for solving a very specific problem you have. However, as soon as you start unblocking yourself from the real problem you want to solve, the agentic engineering part is no longer interesting. It's great to be solving a problem and then realize you could improve it very quickly with a quick request to an agent, but you should largely be focused on solving the problem. Yet I see so many people talking about running multiple agents and just building something without much effort spent using that thing, as though the agentic code itself is where the value lies. I suspect this is a hangover from decades where software was valuable (we still have plenty of highly valued, unprofitable software companies as a testament to this). I'm reminded a bit of Alan Watts' famous quote in regards to psychedelics: > If you get the message, hang up the phone. If you're really leveraging AI to do something unique and potentially quite disruptive, very quickly the "AI" part should become fairly uninteresting and not the focus of your attention.
- dw_arthur 7mo ago
  It's funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. I'm going to be really confused if this is still the case at the end of the year. A whole year of access to these latest agentic models has to produce visible economic changes or something is wrong.
  - sillyfluke 7mo ago
    >funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. That's because the threat is now not other businesses, but your own users who decide to vibe-code their own "Claw" product instead of using your company's vibeslop, so there are no buyers for your single-week product. All these new harness developers are engaging in resume-driven development to save their own asses. The only ones that are not naked when the tide recedes are the ones that are able to jump to the next layer of abstraction on the infinite staircase, until the next tide comes five seconds later.
slopinthebag 7mo ago
Or another way of looking at it: just because digging a ditch became cheap and fast with the backhoe doesn't mean you can just dig a bunch of ditches and become rich.
- scuff3d 7mo ago
  Yeah but there were a lot less ditch diggers in the world after the invention of the backhoe
  - slopinthebag 7mo ago
    If true, only because people knew where to dig and did it with purpose.
  - locknitpicker 7mo ago
    > Yeah but there were a lot less ditch diggers in the world after the invention of the backhoe As a specialization? Sure. But the ditch diggers moved since to machine operators, handymen and the like. In the past there were sysadmins. Do we have less software engineers since sysadmins ceased to be a thing?
    - wiseowise 7mo ago
      > As a specialization? Sure. But the ditch diggers moved since to machine operators, handymen and the like. All of them? What if they liked digging ditches? > In the past there were sysadmins. Do we have less software engineers since sysadmins ceased to be a thing? Software Engineers were never sysadmins in the past, you’re thinking DevOps maybe?
      - simonw 7mo ago
        The software engineers who like "digging ditches" are going to have a bad time in the new agentic engineering world, unfortunately. Here "digging ditches" corresponds to somebody else figuring out the detailed requirements and specification and handing it to the engineer to transcribe into code. That's what the coding agents replace. Thankfully for most engineers I've worked with that's only a small part of their overall jobs, albeit one of the most time consuming.

by DrJid 7mo ago

stackghost 7mo ago

Indeed: The act of actually typing the code into an editor was never the hard or valuable part of software engineering. The value comes from being able to design applications that work well, with reasonable performance and security properties.

ok123456 7mo ago
Then why did most software fail to do that even before the advent of LLMs?
- sethops1 7mo ago
  Because designing systems that work well is difficult. It takes years of experience to develop the muscle memory behind quality systems architecture. Writing the code is an implementation detail (albeit a large one).
- fxtentacle 7mo ago
  Are we sure it's not failing anymore after the advent of LLMs?
- stackghost 7mo ago
  Because coding bootcamps and CS programs were churning out squillions of people who could type the code but had poor design and analytical skills, because there was a time where being able to implement Dijkstra on a whiteboard would get you 400k at a FAANG.
  - LtWorf 7mo ago
    And you think these people will now produce better results with the assistance of an LLM that was trained on their work?
    - stackghost 7mo ago
      No, that's the opposite of what I think. Bootcamp grads are basically obsolete now. The real skill has always been the ability to make good design decisions and that's still the case in the LLM era.
      - locknitpicker 7mo ago
        > Bootcamp grads are basically obsolete now. I beg to differ. I know for a fact that some companies started hiring people with LLM experience, whose only expertise is spending all Copilot enterprise account tokens on their first week at the job and proceed to whine that the lack of tokens was stifling their creativity. Say what you may about boot camps, but at least the people getting hired could do things and understand what they are doing.
      - margorczynski 7mo ago
        > The real skill has always been the ability to make good design decisions and that's still the case in the LLM era. For now maybe yes but the goal is totally removing the human from the decision loop regarding technical stuff.
simonw 7mo ago
It wasn't the hard or valuable part of software engineering, but it was a very time-consuming part. That's what's interesting about this new era - the time-consuming-but-easy bit has suddenly stopped being time-consuming.
- rhubarbtree 7mo ago
  Agreed, often see cope from managers along the line of “writing the code was never the bottleneck”. Well, sure felt like it.
  - LtWorf 7mo ago
    For most people who can type with more than 2 fingers, thinking what to type is slower than typing it.
    - rhubarbtree 7mo ago
      Aha, and AI beats you at both.
- habinero 7mo ago
  It's not time consuming. It seemed slow because of all the other important parts of the job. People vastly overestimate how much time SWEs actually spend writing code lol

fmbb 7mo ago

Raising $100M doesn’t even mean you have a good idea or an idea people like or an idea you can even make money on.

arijun 7mo ago
It’s probably a better indicator of a good business idea than if you get slapped in the face…
- arghwhat 7mo ago
  And yet, who would you trust more - a CEO that raised 100M on their "vision" or someone who got slapped in the face?
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  A raise is random noise, not signal, based a confidence game within the VC ecosystem. LP capital call->GP gamble based on waves arms around considering VC underperforms as an asset [1] [2] class even when accounting for the grand slam returns. It's 0DTE options gambling dressed up as skill and an art. But, you know [3] [4] [5], lottery still pays out sometimes. TLDR A raise is not robust signal in this regard. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7260137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7260137 [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterjameswalker_most-venture-funds-will-underperform-the-activity-7418729501393870848-Bn1Z/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/peterjameswalker_most-venture... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- LtWorf 7mo ago
  I mean, juicero got the money instead of the slaps in the face it deserved. And there's thousands of startup like that. I think VCs are terrible at picking and a dice would probably do a better job.

dr-detroit 7mo ago

[dead]

kneel25 7mo ago

I think we’re falling into a trap of overestimating the value of incrementally directing it. The output is all coming from the same brain so what stops someone just getting lucky with a prompt and generation that one-shots the whole thing you spent time breaking down and thinking about. The code quality will be the same, and unless you’re directing it to the point where you may as well be coding the old way, the decision-making is the same too.

crystal_revenge 7mo ago

> The new skill is mastering the craft of directing cheap inputs toward valuable outcomes. Strongly agree with this. It took me awhile to realize that "agentic engineering" wasn't about writing software it was about being able to very quickly iterate on bespoke tools for solving a very specific problem you have. However, as soon as you start unblocking yourself from the real problem you want to solve, the agentic engineering part is no longer interesting. It's great to be solving a problem and then realize you could improve it very quickly with a quick request to an agent, but you should largely be focused on solving the problem. Yet I see so many people talking about running multiple agents and just building something without much effort spent using that thing, as though the agentic code itself is where the value lies. I suspect this is a hangover from decades where software was valuable (we still have plenty of highly valued, unprofitable software companies as a testament to this). I'm reminded a bit of Alan Watts' famous quote in regards to psychedelics: > If you get the message, hang up the phone. If you're really leveraging AI to do something unique and potentially quite disruptive, very quickly the "AI" part should become fairly uninteresting and not the focus of your attention.

dw_arthur 7mo ago
It's funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. I'm going to be really confused if this is still the case at the end of the year. A whole year of access to these latest agentic models has to produce visible economic changes or something is wrong.
- sillyfluke 7mo ago
  >funny that so many people are using AI and still hasn't really shown up in productivity numbers or product quality yet. That's because the threat is now not other businesses, but your own users who decide to vibe-code their own "Claw" product instead of using your company's vibeslop, so there are no buyers for your single-week product. All these new harness developers are engaging in resume-driven development to save their own asses. The only ones that are not naked when the tide recedes are the ones that are able to jump to the next layer of abstraction on the infinite staircase, until the next tide comes five seconds later.

slopinthebag 7mo ago

Or another way of looking at it: just because digging a ditch became cheap and fast with the backhoe doesn't mean you can just dig a bunch of ditches and become rich.

scuff3d 7mo ago
Yeah but there were a lot less ditch diggers in the world after the invention of the backhoe
- slopinthebag 7mo ago
  If true, only because people knew where to dig and did it with purpose.
- locknitpicker 7mo ago
  > Yeah but there were a lot less ditch diggers in the world after the invention of the backhoe As a specialization? Sure. But the ditch diggers moved since to machine operators, handymen and the like. In the past there were sysadmins. Do we have less software engineers since sysadmins ceased to be a thing?
  - wiseowise 7mo ago
    > As a specialization? Sure. But the ditch diggers moved since to machine operators, handymen and the like. All of them? What if they liked digging ditches? > In the past there were sysadmins. Do we have less software engineers since sysadmins ceased to be a thing? Software Engineers were never sysadmins in the past, you’re thinking DevOps maybe?
    - simonw 7mo ago
      The software engineers who like "digging ditches" are going to have a bad time in the new agentic engineering world, unfortunately. Here "digging ditches" corresponds to somebody else figuring out the detailed requirements and specification and handing it to the engineer to transcribe into code. That's what the coding agents replace. Thankfully for most engineers I've worked with that's only a small part of their overall jobs, albeit one of the most time consuming.