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Comment by brookst

“Software is degrading for obvious reasons” is just painfully lazy. Where are the metrics of degradation? Where are the claims of specific reasons, and the evidence of causality?

If the complaint is vibe coding makes bad software, I largely believe it, but I absolutely believe that vibe arguing makes tissue paper arguments. “Everyone knows” and “it’s obvious” are flimsy things to rest arguments on.

I’m writing dramatically better software for all the reasons this post says obviously make worse software.

Testing has gotten much easier, and bug fixing has gotten much easier. I looked at a pre-AI project I did a couple of years ago: test to code LOC was 0.15:1. The projects I work on now are around 1.3:1. The old project had no accessibility considered at all, the new ones are nicely done aria and beyond. Old project is stuck on old libraries because upgrading is a major pain. New projects take new libraries (after cooldown) no matter the effort.

So I’m left thinking that perhaps some people, too lazy to use the new powers of new tools, churn out the same or worse quality code/essays.

But I am seeing a lot of very high quality software that simply wouldn’t have been possible before, and I believe the same could be done with essays by leveraging these tools to research and find real data beyond “it’s obvious”. But that does take a lot more work.

parent brookst 4 days ago

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