albertodenia

I wasn't aware (never got into Lisp), that's really interesting.

I agree. My hope is that the half-broken made-in-a-day vibecoded demos getting attention is just a phase. Those things look impressive because they would have been impressive 1-2 years ago, but when people's brains adjust to the new normal they won't be any more interesting than the food you cooked for yourself last night or your creative writing class assignment.

That's a fascinating topic. I'm curious about how do you approach it... like can the user-facing AI change any part of the code? Or is it constrained to a set of predefined components/plugin layer/etc.?

Very cool, thanks for that. I was vaguely aware that clay metaphors were important in several religions, and I thought about looking into it and maybe finding a nice quote for the article, but didn't have the time (I accept suggestions, though!)

> When the mold is done, you let the agent pour in the code in any format you like.

Exactly. And the mold could be a spec, an MVP or even one of the implementations (e.g. the Swift one) acting as the source of truth for the other versions.

> "just" give them Claude and teach them to describe what they want and iterate to get something that maybe resembles an MVP but in more cases is just an interactive UI spec

That's a great example of what malleable code unlocks. You let the client to create the mold themselves, refine it and then use it to properly build the product.

> Code always was, it's supposed to be malleable

Yes, well-designed code is malleable to an extent when coding by hand, but even then it's an order of magnitude more rigid than when working with agents (and real-world code often ossifies, as you pointed out). Malleability comes not only from the possibility of change but also from the speed.

> It's the data you generate with that code that's your asset. You can always rewrite the code.

I like that perspective, but "you can always rewrite the code" almost never happens in real life for complex projects, and when it does, it's a huge undertaking that takes many months or even years. Malleable code makes that much more feasible, I'd argue.

Author here. No analogy is perfect, but this is how working with code has felt for me for a while, so I wanted to write down my thoughts about it.

I wrote this a couple of months ago, and everything moves so fast nowadays that the concept of factories is already being blurred as harnesses get better and require less tooling around them. I still think that the distinction between wanting to be in the loop vs automated out from it holds up, though.

There are other interesting aspects of malleable code that I don't explore in the article, for example:

- Ownership. People feel less attached to their code, which has both good and bad consequences (e.g. fewer ego battles but less accountability).

- Malleable software that adapt to users. Huge topic, many interesting questions to explore.

- Assets in code. Things like (some) 3D graphics and animations can now be done entirely in code. Before they were very tedious to code and tweak.

- Collaboration dynamics. Instead of high-frequency alignment (discussions, meetings) to make sure every detail is clear before the implementation, it might be more efficient to go ahead with educated guesses and align later over a working build.

Author here. No analogy is perfect, but this is how working with code has felt for me for a while, so I wanted to write down my thoughts about it.

I wrote this a couple of months ago, and everything moves so fast nowadays that the concept of factories is already being blurred as harnesses get better and require less tooling around them. I still think that the distinction between wanting to be in the loop vs removed from it holds up, though.

There are other interesting aspects of malleable code that I don't explore in the article, for example:

- How it affects ownership. People feel less attached to their code, which has both good and bad consequences (e.g. fewer ego battles, but also less accountability).

- Software that's malleable to users. A big topic with many interesting open questions to explore.

Great project! Any plans to support VR?

I'm also having the time of my life building products I want to exist. It's like suddenly having the budget to hire a small team and materialize ideas that before would have required many months or years of your time (or taking investment).

And yet, I'd be lying if I said I don't miss the flow.

As you might have researched it, do you know if there's currently any AI model or arrangement of models that are able to produce truly game-ready 3D assets? Good meshes with appropriate poly count and good topology, decent UV maps and textures, etc. I've seen some products advertising that, but I'm not sure they are up to their promise, and I haven't had the bandwidth to research it in depth...