Post #3087671

2026-04-03 04:46 UTC

@chrisjrn@social.coop I suspect maintenance of LLM code, in the long term, will be less and less important for the same reason that few people know how to darn socks or patch clothing. When something is cheap enough that the opportunity cost of maintenance is similar to the thing itself, people tend to dispose of the thing and replace with something new.

Replies (2)

@chrisjrn@social.coop 2026-04-03 04:49

@kyle@mastodon.kylerank.in That is certainly the bet that's being made; the question, for me, is whether the (inherent) complexity that arises from accretion is cost-free. Until now we've balanced it: we now have the opportunity to not. Darning socks/patching clothing does tend to result in the exact same thing: the way codebases grow functionality does not. (See (6) in my thread)

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@isagalaev@mastodon.social 2026-04-03 15:40

@kyle@mastodon.kylerank.in @chrisjrn@social.coop this is not new for LLMs, by the way. This is how typical in-house corporate software has lived for some time: a year or two of frantic development, then stuck unmaintainable and then replaced by a new system. The approach works even though it's technically inefficient, as our industry rewards overhiring. The latter might be changing though…

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