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  variety8675
  This article just reminds me that workslop is so hard to counter because it takes no effort to produce and immense effort to debunk
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  discreteevent
  It's worth noting that the context here is a system that was translated by an LLM which is the ideal use case for it. 90% of the thinking had already been done by developers of the existing system.
• Ozzie_osman
  You need to understand the system you're working on enough to make well-informed decisions about its current and future states.In some cases you can get away with not reading the code. And maybe in the future that will be more common. But for now, I personally prefer to read (or skim) the code, and not abdicate to AI.
• adventure331
  Yes I agree thinking is still needed off course, but it has never been easier to ship 'half baked' things that don't actually matter and just works. What I mean is, if something has little proven business value, why waste time making sure it is correctly implemented? I'd rather spend time thinking about things that has actual proven business value, otherwise I'm not opposed to shipping something that I understand only 60 or 70% and save energy. ie: how it works at a high level.If we are going to the moon, then by all means I think we should probably scrutinize every single line of code, but most business aren't going to the moon.
• lordnacho
  It's not clear how the re-writes were done.If it were me, I would start by getting a summary of what problems the existing solution solves. I would also make sure that summary had the non-functional requirement. Maybe write a test suite that opens the page and does all the stuff.Then ask the LLM to implement in another language, with those solutions in mind, but first coming up with reasons why the target language might not be as good, and where it might have useful features that the original language didn't. Use the test suite to check if things are working.I honestly don't think you would land far away. You would have to answer a few questions along the way, but it would mostly be plain sailing.I would expect to be able to do this with very little human attention, whereas a language rewrite two years ago might take a whole month, not including learning the new language.
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  as1mov
  I dread for the future where "you have to think" is considered a controversial statement.
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  nicfio
  LLMs produce code faster than humans are able to check it. Today's systems are able to generate thousands of lines of code per day, no human team would be able to keep up with them. The problem, in my opinion, is the way LLMs are used. An LLM reasons and makes mistakes according to the logic it was created with, but different LLMs reason and make mistakes in different ways. I'll give an example: take 2 black boxes, each one with 2 inputs and 1 output. Inside, the boxes work in a different way: with the same inputs the outputs are different. The real key is to use the method of adversarial development: this reduces to a minimum (even if it doesn't eliminate completely) the possibility of errors. So to humans the task of checking the output, and to have quality output you need to spend, and a lot, at least 2 frontier LLMs. But the question is: is quality as a goal an expense or an investment?
• softwaredoug
  These articles IMO suffer from good data. It seems we could probably at this point study open source projects longitudinally and see what we learn depending on their AI policies. Are there patterns in stability? Bugginess? Performance? Readability? Etc.
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  stephbook
  With all these ports, I always wonder: Who implements new features, and in which code base?It's easy to port a codebase (at least, if you have automated tests), but once you've done that, do you- Implement features in the old code and port again?- Implement them in the new, unfamiliar codebase?- Just write a Jira ticket and let the agent YOLO it?
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  tomrod
  Informative thought process here. Pre-committing benchmarks to measure real efficiency gains might have helped, but hands-off complex rewrites are still not shovel ready.
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  Tractor8626
  I agree what you have to think. But example is kind bad.We got strictly better version of application for cheap. What is there even to complain about?
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  duncangh
  My preference is to not think, then act and then perpetually think about what I should have done instead
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  tiemster
  Or as someone in 2025 said..."it's better to be competent".
• wuhhh
  Really appreciate the time taken to dig into this with solid improvements to boot, great work
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  tripleee
  My suspicion is DHH is intentionally creating controversy to drive interest to OmarchyIf he truly believed in the idea of never reading the code, he'd fire all his developers and have the designers do it all - create very high level feature descriptions and iterate on them. Put your money where your mouth is
• royal__
  "If you looked at the code, and yeah, I know, we should not be reading code anymore"I'm pretty sure this is sarcasm, but it's also a major factor in what differentiated slop from non-slop AI work: did a developer actually take the time to review and clean up generated code. Which is, itself, an extremely time consuming process
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  thomascountz
  This post resonates a lot with me and my approach to counter the idea that an LLM (as amazing as a tool it is) gives programmers permission to stop engineering. To me, executing a decision in the face of trade-offs is what the job is all about.So, I want to keep pulling the thread: is it worth reading—meaning, understanding—the code in order to prevent p95 latency from skyrocketing, avoid OOM death, and keep our apps reliable for customers?The cost of understanding the code is ostensibly very high relative to just using a clanker (citation needed), so does paying that cost translate to value—what is it worth? Concretely, if vibe coding increases bugs and enshittification, but decreases spending without decreasing revenue (read: customers suffer, but they don't leave), do we still need to pay the cost of reading code? Is it better to invest in stickiness, lobbying, and market capture?This comment shouldn't be read as advocating for this; it's a thought experiment about pragmatism and trade-offs, and reflects what I'm witnessing companies (and "programmers") asking themselves. I personally care a lot about understanding systems and code, and I believe I'm paid to do exactly that (I very much enjoy understanding code and nobody is paying me to run a business, so I may be biased in this). In everyday SaaS-land—not talking about critical safety systems—we've seen production databases destroyed, personal data leaked, platforms unwittingly exploited, and UX bugs creep into our operating systems, and yet the companies involved keep on keeping on.Is thinking, meaning taking the time to actually understand what our systems are doing, going to increase their shareholder value?
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  IshKebab
  I dunno. You still have to test, but in my experience if I noticed unreliability during high load I could just tell Claude "I noticed unreliability during high load" and it would easily have set up a high load benchmark, discovered this broadcast channel issue and fixed it.It definitely improves the results if you do think but I don't think "you still have to think" is a safe space that's going to save us from unemployment.
• wilg
  I think attempting few-shot agentic ports of an app as an exercise and having the results not be perfect is really a referendum on thinking or using AI in coding in any particularly meaningful way.
• RobRivera
  smokes cigaretteLife, eh?
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  indrex
  I had to google “clanker”.
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  sergiotapia
  I feel a bit sad DHH did the elixir one so dirty. It's the only language with the rule to follow rails to the T and of course Elixir can fly and be incredibly powerful without redis and other bullshit. It feels deliberately hamstrung. Almost maliciously because heavy hitters like Jose Valim have told him about this and he just ignores it.Not a good look tbh
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  Mawr
  Oh wow, he's actually delusional:"I didn't do anything. I asked two frontier agents to make the most of Elixir and this is what they came up with. Please do send a PR to speed things up! But also realize that it's not exactly extra points for Elixir if frontier agents can't find the magic "go fast" switches."https://x.com/dhh/status/2106864061832991134
• kennysve
  [flagged]
• 666illuminati
  [dead]
• adityaships
  [flagged]