There are plenty of decades old codebases written in old guard languages that were suffering the same fate pre-ai. What is old is new again.

We will just repeat the same pattern, have the latest and greatest frontier models rewrite the software just like how many desktop monoliths moved to React SPAs.

The real winners are frontier labs, we pay them to write black box software and we pay them to rewrite the software.

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proc0 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This pattern is somewhat self-inflicted. There's very few reasons for software to change, IF it is properly developed. A reasonable life span should be in the order of decades, not years, or I bet now with AI it will be months. Do we really want a constantly changing software landscape that requires unlimited Internet connectivity to function? THat seems like such a waste of electricity and bandwidth, but as you say that has been the norm.

	▲	jamesfinlayson 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed, but it's a very big if that I haven't seen in practice much. By January, 50% of major codebases that I've worked on will no longer be running. Something that I'm working on for my day job is essentially 32 years old though (been through a couple of big upgrades along the way) and that's how it should be, unless the underlying technology would be better off being replaced (like a COBOL or Fortran codebase).

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B4uler5 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, but why are we accepting that? Do we envision a scenario where code will be so black boxed that software creators will be pinching pennies and cutting corners so they can eek out a profit margin over the cost of development? It seems insane that we’ve willingly taken this route, the power when using LLMs is immense, but the power we’re giving up is all we had.

I saw a youtube comment a few months ago that has stuck in my head, can’t remember the exact wording but it was something along the lines of “I’ve never seen an industry so excited to cuck itself out of a good wage”.