continue import from models.md > software dev

writing

  • have good incentives now! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45623083

If your project has a robust, comprehensive and stable test suite agentic coding tools can fly with it. Without tests? Your agent might claim something works without having actually tested it at all, plus any new change could break an unrelated feature without you realizing it. Test-first development is particularly effective with agents that can iterate in a loop. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/7/vibe-engineering/

  • https://www.sudowrite.com/
  • đź“™ Ousterhout comments first [131]
  • https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/20/after-months-of-coding-with-llms/
  • https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lp5afidgvc2a

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42095434 there's a fair amount of pushback as well. i align with the first comment to this guy. decent amount of pushback seems like: "im a real man, my editor is emacs, i have strong opinions about c99 vs. rust, LLMs are for wimps who write $DYNAMICALLY_TYPED_LANGUAGE_HERE" + people that are bad at writing prompts. essentially, LLMs reward the type of person who could write a good question on Stack Overflow or otherwise teaches them how to do so (if they are willing to learn) https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve - to Josh/Kurt 24.11.15

architecture

90% of my skills just went to zero dollars and 10% of my skills just went up 1000x. - Kent Beck https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/22/kent-beck/

  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336553
  • ADRs / Stack Overflow won https://harper.blog/2025/04/17/an-llm-codegen-heros-journey/ https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-curiosity-36 https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/110601051375142142

While we’ve always valued strong communicators on tech teams for documentation and collaboration, it’s doubly important now. Not only do you need to communicate with humans, you need to write clear, precise instructions for AI. Being able to craft effective prompts is becoming as vital as writing good code. Suddenly you find yourself building out very robust specs, PRDs, and to-do docs.

  • https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html

For starters, non-typists are almost invisible. They don't leave a footprint in our online community...design involves communicating with other people, and design involves a persistent record of the decision tree. "And as for this non-college bullshit I got two words for that: learn to fuckin' type."

vibe coding

  • CQ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45659881
  • Github spark, Claude artifacts https://github.com/features/spark

Sparks apps are client-side apps built with React They are authenticated: users must have a GitHub account to access them, and the user’s GitHub identity is then made available to the app. They can store data! GitHub provides a persistent server-side key/value storage API.

  • https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/1/not-vibe-coding/
  • good for MVPs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43576813
  • https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/6/vibe-coding/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWwS911iLhg

10x

  • legal / medical https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPro/comments/1mt5igj/what_is_the_most_profitable_thing_you_have_done/
  • https://simonwillison.net/2024/Oct/21/claude-artifacts/
  • supercharged smart young people https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmiwV8kUz2E https://www.bitecode.dev/p/what-if-ai-eventually-make-programmers
  • https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/12/why-you-should-be-talking-with-gpt-about-philosophy.html

this sounds hyperbolic, but i think AI is going to be akin to the dawn of relational databases in the 80s when it comes to the software industry. re: orgs. take databases: "no you dont need all those people punching up figures. you can replace all your accountants and secretaries with cobol!". -> do we have more or less jobs centered around the production/maintenance/whatever of business data in 2024 than we did in 1974? it would seem to me a great deal more. dunno if this will hold for number of devs, but feel >=50% that there will be a fuck ton more code written in 5 years than today. bigger economy = longer tail The amount of money flowing through capitalism would astound you. The number and variety of firms participating in the economy would astound you. We don't see most of it every day for the same reason abstractions protect us from having to care about metallurgy while programming. - McKenzie https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629780719419392 AI as a mechanical arm - you still need to know how to hit the ball, but once you do, it'll go a lot further. https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-curiosity-36

you still need to know things

“When thinking about coding with LLMs, think of them as generators of templates. You say what code you need, and an LLM provides you with a template from a collection that most closely resembles the code you needed.” I’ve said something similar in different conversations these past few weeks and that I’ve begun thinking of LLMs-as-code-assistant more in the category of frameworks and generators than magic wands. https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/joy-and-curiosity-23

people are still not using it

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/llms-in-2024/#knowledge-is-incredibly-unevenly-distributed writing an algebra book https://x.com/robertghrist/status/1874105564051234951