We put a coding agent in a while loop

There will be a a new kind of job for software engineers, sort of like a cross between working with legacy code and toxic site cleanup.

Like back in the day being brought in to “just fix” a amalgam of FoxPro-, Excel-, and Access-based ERP that “mostly works” and only “occasionally corrupts all our data” that ambitious sales people put together over last 5 years.

But worse - because “ambitious sales people” will no longer be constrained by sandboxes of Excel or Access - they will ship multi-cloud edge-deployed kubernetes micro-services wired with Kafka, and it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time.

> and it will be harder to find someone to talk to understand what they were trying to do at the time.

This will be the big counter to AI generated tools; at one point they become black boxes and the only thing people can do is to try and fix them or replace them altogether.

Of course, in theory, AI tooling will only improve; today's vibe coded software that in some cases generate revenue can be fed into the models of the future and improved upon. In theory.

Personally, I hate it; I don't like magic or black boxes.

> or replace them altogether.

Before AI companies were usually very reticent to do a rewrite or major refactoring of software because of the cost but that calculus may change with AI. A lot of physical products have ended up in this space where it's cheaper to buy a new product and throw out the old broken one rather than try and fix it. If AI lowers the cost of creating software then I'm not sure why it wouldn't go down the same path as physical goods.