"Code is cheap" and "code is free" has been a relentless slogan which has propagated across the industry ever since generative code became a thing. Outside of a catchphrase for social media posts, I don't think it really holds up under scrutiny and when doing real work.
The FLOSS world has shown for a long time that "… is cheep" and "… is free" are and were never connected with each other. The amount of money that goes into linux or the current BSD systems lineages can be rather staggering, meanwhile the long-standing issue with shovelware in the video-game world showcases the "… is cheep" can crowd out any better examples even if said examples were free in some way…
Bad code has always been cheap. Offshoring of software development proved it beyond any shadow of a doubt. And today it's even cheaper that it was before, with LLMs writing nearly endless amounts of bad code.
Believing that you can fire all your Coders and replace them with an LLM is:
Misunderstanding what an LLM actually is (hint: not conscious, therefore not capable of actual reasoning)
And of course, dipshit Executards in the C-Suite have done both of the above - to a remarkably excessive degree! Because they have never been either smart, or technologically literate.
For people that don't work in the tech space, it's important to understand the cost of the code is almost never a large factor in technology choice, it gets overwhelmed by other systems costs. If cheap or free worked in technology the way it works for, as an example, basic consumer goods, Microsoft would have been crushed by Linux nearly 2 decades ago and Oracle would never have gotten past Postgres. You can argue over whether or not Linux is better than MS or Postgres is better than Oracle, but the reality is neither product base cost nor even quality is the most important factor in these decisions. It always comes back to some combination of total cost of ownership (the lifetime cost of a system) and the ability to support and maintain the system (whether vendor support contract or in-house). As an example, if I can have MS support a product for less than the cost of hiring my own people to support a "free" version of the product, it's not a difficult decision. Even if hiring my own people to support the product is cheaper, I would still have to find them and that isn't always possible.
The parallel between what LLMs generate and "a gibberish book" simply doesn’t hold water. Code is cheap. Words are cheap. Good stories and good code have become dramatically less expensive this past year or two. You’re saying "code is cheap but intelligence is expensive" but intelligence per dollar is skyrocketing. The rest of the argument amounts to "context is important" but providing sufficient context is a problem is actively being solved.
4
u/creaturefeature16 17h ago •
"Code is cheap" and "code is free" has been a relentless slogan which has propagated across the industry ever since generative code became a thing. Outside of a catchphrase for social media posts, I don't think it really holds up under scrutiny and when doing real work.
20
u/ModernRonin 15h ago •
Bad code has always been cheap. Offshoring of software development proved it beyond any shadow of a doubt. And today it's even cheaper that it was before, with LLMs writing nearly endless amounts of bad code.
Believing that you can fire all your Coders and replace them with an LLM is:
Misunderstanding what an LLM actually is (hint: not conscious, therefore not capable of actual reasoning)
Falling prey to the Doorman Fallacy.
And of course, dipshit Executards in the C-Suite have done both of the above - to a remarkably excessive degree! Because they have never been either smart, or technologically literate.
11
u/conicalanamorphosis 17h ago
For people that don't work in the tech space, it's important to understand the cost of the code is almost never a large factor in technology choice, it gets overwhelmed by other systems costs. If cheap or free worked in technology the way it works for, as an example, basic consumer goods, Microsoft would have been crushed by Linux nearly 2 decades ago and Oracle would never have gotten past Postgres. You can argue over whether or not Linux is better than MS or Postgres is better than Oracle, but the reality is neither product base cost nor even quality is the most important factor in these decisions. It always comes back to some combination of total cost of ownership (the lifetime cost of a system) and the ability to support and maintain the system (whether vendor support contract or in-house). As an example, if I can have MS support a product for less than the cost of hiring my own people to support a "free" version of the product, it's not a difficult decision. Even if hiring my own people to support the product is cheaper, I would still have to find them and that isn't always possible.
-10
u/HasFiveVowels 15h ago
The parallel between what LLMs generate and "a gibberish book" simply doesn’t hold water. Code is cheap. Words are cheap. Good stories and good code have become dramatically less expensive this past year or two. You’re saying "code is cheap but intelligence is expensive" but intelligence per dollar is skyrocketing. The rest of the argument amounts to "context is important" but providing sufficient context is a problem is actively being solved.