alt Hacker NewsThis was more true a few months ago but Fable has improved the situation considerably.
Also just remember - minimalist code looks and feels great but customers do not read your code. I have caught myself many times providing "corrections" to abstractions that were already ~fine, just not perfect. The average SWE costs $200/hr. Careful you don't burn $50 worrying about code that will likely be rewritten or can be better abstracted when that's actually needed.
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Minimalist code is necessary to keep AI agents working well for longer than a month on a system IME. At a certain point, their own machinations overwhelm them and they both slow down, and make worse and worse decisions.
Also, you can probably think about it like this:
"Will I benefit from this code being minimalist before [date]", where [date] is whenever you think the agent will be good enough to come back and make the corrections you would make today.
> The average SWE costs $200/hr.
And this is how I find out I'm woefully underpaid.
The average SWE makes $400k a year? Are you being serious?
> The average SWE costs $200/hr
This is a pointless quibble but the hourly rate claim is not true--it's like ~$60 in the USA [0]. Maybe you meant at a specific Org but this is important context when comparing "pricing" between human and AI.
[0] https://www.salaryexpert.com/salary/job/software-developer/u...