Post #2189083
2026-04-03 04:59 UTC
@jacob@social.jacobian.org all of that is to say: the reason readability matters is that if you want to maintain some code, some specific group of humans must maintain an understanding of its structure, such that they can effectuate *and be held accountable for* required changes. The putative cost reduction of an "agentic" tool inherently assumes that you can shrink that group by replacing some of them with LLMs. Maybe, eventually, some will be able to. But ultimately *somebody* still needs to read all the code.
Replies (1)
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@glyph@mastodon.social 2026-04-03 05:01
@jacob@social.jacobian.org the world in which agentic tools could have the level of success that you're imagining with trash-level code quality would seem to me to be the same world where anyone annoyed with a subscription-model app would simply download a 30-year-old abandonware replacement from archive dot org, because they'd be comfortable with long-term stasis. which seems unrealistic to me.