4 ms·

> you can build a crazy popular & successful product while violating all the traditional rules about “good” code which has always been true

spoiler 6mo ago
Yes, and to add, in case it's not obvious: in my experience the maintenance, mental (and emotional costs, call me sensitive) cost of bad code compounds exponentially the more hacks you throw at it
- hypeatei 6mo ago
  Now with AI, you're not only dealing with maintenance and mental overhead, but also the overhead of the Anthropic subscription (or whatever AI company) to deal with this spaghetti. Some may decide that's an okay tradeoff, but personally it seems insane to delegate a majority of development work to a blackbox, cloud-hosted LLM that can be rug pulled from underneath of you at any moment (and you're unable to hold it accountable if it screws up)
  - fragmede 6mo ago
    Call me naive, but I don't believe that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and ChatGPT.com and Claude.ai are going to be hard down and never come back. Same as Gmail, which is an entirely different corporation. I mean, they could, but it doesn't seem insane to use Gmail for my email, and that's way more important to my life functioning than this new AI thing.
    - paulryanrogers 6mo ago
      Email is deterministic and portable. Export to a standard format and import somewhere else.
- babelfish 6mo ago
  Sure, for humans. Not sure they'll be the primary readers of code going forward
  - tombert 6mo ago
    I'm pretty sure that will be true with AI as well. No accounting for taste, but part of makes code hard for me to reason about is when it has lots of combinatorial complexity, where the amount of states that can happen makes it difficult to know all the possible good and bad states that your program can be in. Combinatorial complexity is something that objectively can be expensive for any form of computer, be it a human brain or silicon. If the code is written in such a way that the number of correct and incorrect states are impossible to know, then the problem becomes undecidable. I do think there is code that is "objectively" difficult to work with.
    - ahepp 6mo ago
      What do you think about the argument that we are entering a world where code is so cheap to write, you can throw the old one away and build a new one after you've validated the business model, found a niche, whatever? I mean, it seems like that has always been true to an extent, but now it may be even more true? Once you know you're sitting on a lode of gold, it's a lot easier to know how much to invest in the mine.
      - eloisant 6mo ago
        It hasn't always been true, it started with rapid development tools in the late 90's I believe. And some people thought they were building "disposable" code, only to see their hacks being used for decades. I'm thinking about VB but also behemoth Excel files.
        ahepp 6mo ago
        I guess the question is, are the issues not worth fixing because implementing a fix is extremely expensive, or because the improvements from fixing it were anticipated to be minor? I assume the answer is generally a mix of the two.
roncesvalles 6mo ago
It depends on the urgency. Not every product is urgent. CC arguable was very urgent; even a day of delay meant the competitors could come out with something slightly more appealing.
Gagarin1917 6mo ago
Not according to some on HN. They consider it impossible to create a successful business with imperfect code. Lol
- ModernMech 6mo ago
  A cornerstone of this community is "if you're not embarrassed by the first release you've waited too long", which is a recognition that imperfect code is not needed to create a successful business. That's why ShowHN exists.
baggachipz 6mo ago
Wordpress hides behind a cabinet
eloisant 6mo ago
Still, talk about "good" code exist for a reason. When the code is really bad, you end up paying the price by having to spend too more and more time and develop new features, with greater risk to introduce bugs. I've seen that in companies in the past, where bad code meant less stability and more time to ship features that we needed to retain customers or get new ones. Now whether this is still true with AI, or if vibe coding means bad code no longer have this long term stability and velocity cost because AI are better than humans at working with this bad code... We don't know yet.
datsci_est_2015 6mo ago
It’s also possible to sell chairs that are uncomfortable and food that tastes terrible. Yet somehow we still have carpenters and chefs; Herman Miller and The French Laundry. Some business models will require “good” code, and some won’t. That’s how it is right now as well. But pretending that all business models will no longer require “good” code is like pretending that Michelin should’ve retired its list after the microwave was invented.
- tayo42 6mo ago
  Those high end restaurants are more like art and exploration of food then something practical like code. The only similarity is maybe research in academia. There's not real industry uses of code that's like art.
  - datsci_est_2015 6mo ago
    I used the extreme of the spectrum, I can’t imagine you’re arguing that food is binary good / bad? There’s a litany of food options and quality, matching different business models of convenience and experience. Research in academia seems less appropriate because that’s famously not really a business model, except maybe in the extractive sense
    - VoidWarranty 6mo ago
      Sometimes I think we're being argued against by LLMs. Critique of your example while missing the entire point of it.
    - tayo42 6mo ago
      There's no equivalent of experience and art in code. Writing code is not expressing your self, and you don't pay for pushing the limits and experimenting with it. That's what high end restaurants are along with service they provide. As far as good or bad, how food is made is irreverent to the outcome if it's enjoyable.
- rokob 6mo ago
  Are you saying Herman Miller chairs are uncomfortable?
operatingthetan 6mo ago
See also Salesforce, Oracle, SAP
- generic92034 6mo ago
  Most of their products are so large that you can easily find parts with very bad and parts with excellent code. I am not sure a whole ERP product could work with all very bad code, though.
SoftTalker 6mo ago
Not only true but I would guess it's the normal case. Most software is a huge pile of tech debt held together by zip-ties. Even greenfield projects quickly trend this way, as "just make it work" pressure overrides any posturing about a clean codebase.
- jnpnj 6mo ago
  long ago, wordpress plugins were often a proper mess
wedesoft 6mo ago
Bad code is usually more costly once you are beyond 100 lines of code.

spoiler 6mo ago

Yes, and to add, in case it's not obvious: in my experience the maintenance, mental (and emotional costs, call me sensitive) cost of bad code compounds exponentially the more hacks you throw at it

hypeatei 6mo ago
Now with AI, you're not only dealing with maintenance and mental overhead, but also the overhead of the Anthropic subscription (or whatever AI company) to deal with this spaghetti. Some may decide that's an okay tradeoff, but personally it seems insane to delegate a majority of development work to a blackbox, cloud-hosted LLM that can be rug pulled from underneath of you at any moment (and you're unable to hold it accountable if it screws up)
- fragmede 6mo ago
  Call me naive, but I don't believe that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and ChatGPT.com and Claude.ai are going to be hard down and never come back. Same as Gmail, which is an entirely different corporation. I mean, they could, but it doesn't seem insane to use Gmail for my email, and that's way more important to my life functioning than this new AI thing.
  - paulryanrogers 6mo ago
    Email is deterministic and portable. Export to a standard format and import somewhere else.
babelfish 6mo ago
Sure, for humans. Not sure they'll be the primary readers of code going forward
- tombert 6mo ago
  I'm pretty sure that will be true with AI as well. No accounting for taste, but part of makes code hard for me to reason about is when it has lots of combinatorial complexity, where the amount of states that can happen makes it difficult to know all the possible good and bad states that your program can be in. Combinatorial complexity is something that objectively can be expensive for any form of computer, be it a human brain or silicon. If the code is written in such a way that the number of correct and incorrect states are impossible to know, then the problem becomes undecidable. I do think there is code that is "objectively" difficult to work with.
  - ahepp 6mo ago
    What do you think about the argument that we are entering a world where code is so cheap to write, you can throw the old one away and build a new one after you've validated the business model, found a niche, whatever? I mean, it seems like that has always been true to an extent, but now it may be even more true? Once you know you're sitting on a lode of gold, it's a lot easier to know how much to invest in the mine.
    - eloisant 6mo ago
      It hasn't always been true, it started with rapid development tools in the late 90's I believe. And some people thought they were building "disposable" code, only to see their hacks being used for decades. I'm thinking about VB but also behemoth Excel files.
      - ahepp 6mo ago
        I guess the question is, are the issues not worth fixing because implementing a fix is extremely expensive, or because the improvements from fixing it were anticipated to be minor? I assume the answer is generally a mix of the two.

roncesvalles 6mo ago

It depends on the urgency. Not every product is urgent. CC arguable was very urgent; even a day of delay meant the competitors could come out with something slightly more appealing.

Gagarin1917 6mo ago

Not according to some on HN. They consider it impossible to create a successful business with imperfect code. Lol

ModernMech 6mo ago
A cornerstone of this community is "if you're not embarrassed by the first release you've waited too long", which is a recognition that imperfect code is not needed to create a successful business. That's why ShowHN exists.

baggachipz 6mo ago

Wordpress hides behind a cabinet

eloisant 6mo ago

Still, talk about "good" code exist for a reason. When the code is really bad, you end up paying the price by having to spend too more and more time and develop new features, with greater risk to introduce bugs. I've seen that in companies in the past, where bad code meant less stability and more time to ship features that we needed to retain customers or get new ones. Now whether this is still true with AI, or if vibe coding means bad code no longer have this long term stability and velocity cost because AI are better than humans at working with this bad code... We don't know yet.

datsci_est_2015 6mo ago

It’s also possible to sell chairs that are uncomfortable and food that tastes terrible. Yet somehow we still have carpenters and chefs; Herman Miller and The French Laundry. Some business models will require “good” code, and some won’t. That’s how it is right now as well. But pretending that all business models will no longer require “good” code is like pretending that Michelin should’ve retired its list after the microwave was invented.

tayo42 6mo ago
Those high end restaurants are more like art and exploration of food then something practical like code. The only similarity is maybe research in academia. There's not real industry uses of code that's like art.
- datsci_est_2015 6mo ago
  I used the extreme of the spectrum, I can’t imagine you’re arguing that food is binary good / bad? There’s a litany of food options and quality, matching different business models of convenience and experience. Research in academia seems less appropriate because that’s famously not really a business model, except maybe in the extractive sense
  - VoidWarranty 6mo ago
    Sometimes I think we're being argued against by LLMs. Critique of your example while missing the entire point of it.
  - tayo42 6mo ago
    There's no equivalent of experience and art in code. Writing code is not expressing your self, and you don't pay for pushing the limits and experimenting with it. That's what high end restaurants are along with service they provide. As far as good or bad, how food is made is irreverent to the outcome if it's enjoyable.
rokob 6mo ago
Are you saying Herman Miller chairs are uncomfortable?

operatingthetan 6mo ago