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hintymadtoday at 6:27 PM3 repliesview on HN

Richard Gabriel wrote a famous essay Worse Is Better (https://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html). The MIT approach vs the New Jersey approach does not necessarily apply to the discussion of the merits of coding agent, but the essay's philosophy seems relevant. AI coding sometimes sacrifices correctness or cleanness for simplicity, but it will win and win big as long as the produced code works per its users' standards.

Also, the essay notes that once a "worse" system is established, it can be incrementally improved. Following that argument, we can say that as long as the AI code runs, it creates a footprint. Once the software has users and VC funding, developers can go back and incrementally improve or refactor the AI's mess, to a satisfying degree.


Replies

aurareturntoday at 6:53 PM

  Once the software has users and VC funding, developers can go back and incrementally improve or refactor the AI's mess, to a satisfying degree.
Or in my case, the AI is going back to refactor some poor human written code.

I will fully admit that AI writes better code than me and does it faster.

jamamptoday at 6:41 PM

I hope people can ask themselves why the goal is "winning" and "winning big", and not making a product that you are proud of. It shouldn't be about VC funding and making money, shouldn't we all be making software to make the world a little bit better? I realize we live in an unfortunate reality surrounded by capitalism, but giving in to that seems shortsighted and dismissive of actual problems.

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sesmtoday at 6:35 PM

What definition of simplicity implies that it can be at odds with correctness?