Software metric are hard, indeed :)
Be prepared in a ai-code world when more code does not mean better code.
replies(2):
Recently I refactored about 8,000 lines of vibe-coded bloat down into about 40 lines that ran ten times as fast, required 1/20 as much memory, and eliminated both the defect I was tasked with resolving and several others that I found along the way. (Tangentially, LLM-generated unit tests never cease to amaze me.) The PHBs didn't particularly appreciate my efforts, either. We've got a very expensive Copilot Enterprise license to continue justifying.
There will be vibe and amateur banged out hustle trash, which will be the cheap plastic cutlery of the software world.
There will be lovingly hand crafted by experts code (possibly using some AI but in the hands of someone who knows their shit) that will be like the fine stuff and will cost many times more.
A lot of stuff will get prototyped as crap and then if it gets traction reimplemented with quality.
Then as now, if you let the machine do the thinking for you, the result was a steaming mess. Up to you if that was accessible (and for many, it was).
I’m using AI a lot too. I don’t accept all the changes if they look bad. I also keep things concise. I’ve never seen it generate something so bad I could delete 99 percent of it.
In the case I saw, it was rust code and the LLM typed some argument as a Arc<Mutex<_>> when it absolutely did not need to, which caused the entire PR to inflate. The vibe coder apparently didn't catch this and just kept it vibing... Technically the code did what it needed to do but was super inefficient.
It would have been easy for me to just accept the PR. It technically worked. But it was garbage.
Aggggressively "You can write Java in any language" style JavaScript (`Factory`, `Strategy`, etc) plus a whole mini state machine framework that was replaceable with judicious use of iterators.
(This was at Google, and I suspected it was a promo project gone metastatic.)
If the vision were true, we should see it happen with normal goods too. Quality physical goods do not beat the shit goods in the market : crap furniture is the canonical example (with blog articles discussing the issue).
Software (and movies) is free for subsequent copies, so at first sight you might think software is completely different from physical goods.
However for most factory produced goods, designing and building the factory is the major cost. The marginal cost of producing each copy of an item might be reasonably low (highly dependent on raw materials and labor costs?).
Many expensive physical goods are dominated by the initial design costs, so an expensive Maserati might be complete shit (bought for image status or Veblen reasons, not because it is high quality). There's a reason why the best products are often midrange. The per unit 2..n reproduction cost of cheap physical goods is always low almost by definition.
Some parts of iPhone software are high quality (e.g. the security is astounding). Some parts are bad. Apple monetisation adds non-optional features that have negative value to me: however those features have positive value to Apple.
But it’s pretty obvious when it produces garbage. So you’d reject it there and then. At the very least code review will raise so many questions. How did 8000 lines make it into the code base?
Pre-vibe-coding it was more like the difference between fine silverware and cheap stamped metal stuff.
Tangent but -- one furniture hack I've found is that if you don't want to pay a lot go for the simplest design you can find made of basic wood or metal. It'll be... a wood or metal kit that assembles into the basic form of what is needed. Wood is often unfinished or minimally finished. That stuff is pretty durable. Things that look "fancy" but are cheap tend to be utter trash, made of the worst materials with poor tolerances. A more elaborate or artistic design plus quality equals expensive.
When I say minimal I mean minimal. A cheap quality bed frame is a rack the mattress sits on. A cheap quality dresser is basically bins on tracks.
Ironically places like Amazon is where you find this cheap quality minimal stuff. Furniture stores are complete trash unless they are artisan, often local, like I live in Ohio and there are artisan Amish furniture sellers that sell good (but $$$) stuff that is literally hand made. But find one that is actually sourcing or even tied to an Amish community. You don't have to look into the store, just the stuff inside. It will be solid and build via obvious craft joinery, etc., and will weigh a ton. (and you're supporting a local community)
So I wonder if software will start to look like that. Pay a lot (like enterprise prices) for highly regarded pro software or find something minimal "hand made" by a 1-5 person shop. The world of quality native Mac apps comes to mind for the latter.