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Some thoughts on LLMs and software development

(martinfowler.com)
418 points floverfelt | 1 comments | 28 Aug 25 18:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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jeppester ◴[28 Aug 25 21:56 UTC] No.45057505[source]▶
In my company I feel that we getting totally overrun with code that's 90% good, 10% broken and almost exactly what was needed.

We are producing more code, but quality is definitely taking a hit now that no-one is able to keep up.

So instead of slowly inching towards the result we are getting 90% there in no time, and then spending lots and lots of time on getting to know the code and fixing and fine-tuning everything.

Maybe we ARE faster than before, but it wouldn't surprise me if the two approaches are closer than what one might think.

What bothers me the most is that I much prefer to build stuff rather than fixing code I'm not intimately familiar with.

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utyop22 ◴[29 Aug 25 00:16 UTC] No.45058508[source]▶
"but quality is definitely taking a hit now that no-one is able to keep up."

And its going to get worse! So please explain to me how in the net, you are going to be better off? You're not.

I think most people haven't taken a decent economics class and don't deeply understand the notion of trade offs and the fact there is no free lunch.

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1. threecheese ◴[29 Aug 25 15:02 UTC] No.45065064[source]▶
Fast feedback is one benefit, given the 90% is releasable - even if only to a segment of users. This might be anathema to good engineering, but a benefit to user experience research and to organizations that want to test their market for demand.

Fast feedback is also great for improving release processes; when you have a feedback loop with Product, UX, Engineering, Security etc, being able to front load some % of a deliverable can help you make better decisions that may end up being a time saver net/net.