Has the AI Disruption Arrived - and Will It Just Make Software Cheaper and More Accessible? (aboard.com)
- Reference: 0180841522
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/02/22/0620244/has-the-ai-disruption-arrived---and-will-it-just-make-software-cheaper-and-more-accessible
- Source link: https://aboard.com/my-new-york-times-op-ed-on-vibe-coding/
He elaborates on his point [3]on the Aboard.com blog :
> I'm deeply convinced that it's possible to accelerate software development with AI coding — not deprofessionalize it entirely, or simplify it so that everything is prompts, but make it into a more accessible craft. Things which not long ago cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to pull off might come for hundreds of dollars, and be doable by you, or your cousin. This is a remarkable accelerant, dumped into the public square at a bad moment, with no guidance or manual — and the reaction of many people who could gain the most power from these tools is rejection and anxiety. But as I wrote....
>
> I believe there are millions, maybe billions, of software products that don't exist but should: Dashboards, reports, apps, project trackers and countless others. People want these things to do their jobs, or to help others, but they can't find the budget. They make do with spreadsheets and to-do lists.
>
> I don't expect to change any minds; that's not how minds work. I just wanted to make sure that I used the platform offered by the Times to say, in as cheerful a way as possible: Hey, this new power is real, and it should be in as many hands as possible. I believe everyone should have good software, and that it's more possible now than it was a few years ago.
From his [4]guest essay :
> Is the software I'm making for myself on my phone as good as handcrafted, bespoke code? No. But it's immediate and cheap. And the quantities, measured in lines of text, are large. It might fail a company's quality test, but it would meet every deadline. That is what makes A.I. coding such a shock to the system... What if software suddenly wanted to ship? What if all of that immense bureaucracy, the endless processes, the mind-boggling range of costs that you need to make the computer compute, just goes?
>
> That doesn't mean that the software will be good. But most software today is not good. It simply means that products could go to market very quickly. And for lots of users, that's going to be fine. People don't judge A.I. code the same way they judge slop articles or glazed videos. They're not looking for the human connection of art. They're looking to achieve a goal. Code just has to work... In about six months you could do a lot of things that took me 20 years to learn. I'm writing all kinds of code I never could before — but you can, too. If we can't stop the freight train, we can at least hop on for a ride.
>
> The simple truth is that I am less valuable than I used to be. It stings to be made obsolete, but it's fun to code on the train, too. And if this technology keeps improving, then all of the people who tell me how hard it is to make a report, place an order, upgrade an app or update a record — they could get the software they deserve, too. That might be a good trade, long term.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ford_(technologist)
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/opinion/ai-software.html
[3] https://aboard.com/my-new-york-times-op-ed-on-vibe-coding/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/opinion/ai-software.html
Bias (Score:5, Informative)
The author is biased, since his company is selling AI produced code.
[1]In this case study [aboard.com], they claim to have built a dashboard for a client that is HIPAA compliant. I don't know how you would verify that the AI had produced HIPAA compliant code. In particular, how do they ensure that it won't give data to people who shouldn't have it? What kind of prompt do you write for that?
[1] https://aboard.com/case-studies/make-an-impact-partner-health-analytics-platform
Re:Bias (Score:5, Informative)
There's no HIPAA software certification. There is no legally recognized certification process. As soon as your software leaks data, you are in violation.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, what is that like? What do the cover?
Re: (Score:1)
The good news is, you can now generate that 30k pages in half an hour by getting Claude to do it for you.
Re: (Score:2)
Amusingly, his comments are somewhat schizophrenic if you read them. He saying both how broken the results are and how great that is because he gets them done so quickly.
Cheaper and More Accessible? (Score:2)
No. The process this nullhead describes is nothing more than shoveling shit into a pit.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, shoveling shit into a pit often has some positive value, even if that is not very high. The crap this cretin is peddling has negative worth.
It might fail a company's quality test says the.. (Score:2)
It might fail a company's quality test says the idiot. You don't turn loose a product w/o testing so it doesn't cause massive damage of or completely shutdown networks !!! But it's immediate and cheap, That doesn't mean that the software will be good. I don't expect to change any minds. After all that he said, he's right !
Will It Just Make Software Cheaper and More Access (Score:2)
"Will It Just Make Software Cheaper and More Accessible?"
You know, there is freely available open source software?
It may make programming cheaper (when it's unpaid in terms of time and concentration) and more accessible, but for software there is already free software for everything you need.
Re: (Score:1)
> but for software there is already free software for everything you need
His point is, software is now easier to produce. Free software included.
No guarantee that it will be good - but there is no guarantee of that now either. How good any bit of it will be depends on the level of QA it goes through - just like it depends on that now.
Re: (Score:2)
> No guarantee that it will be good - but there is no guarantee of that now either.
His point seems to be that bad software is better than no software, an optimistic point.
Unfortunately, it's not a true point (code that generates 'rm -rf' might be worse than no code, for example). It would be interested to see a (relatively) unbiased analysis of when AI software is better than no software. Unfortunately this guy is a salesperson, and is biased.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a point, but the statement sounds like they would be filling a void. And they just add tools to the currently available tools, which may help to extend existing (free) software and even create new. But that's not as revolutionary as it is phrased.
Re: (Score:2)
> How good any bit of it will be depends on the level of QA it goes through - just like it depends on that now.
The QA process currently assumes that at least some people actually know how the code works, and QA is already one of the biggest bottlenecks in the development process.
For example, it's often very difficult to get your peers to do code reviews so you can commit your updates because they're busy and the work of doing code reviews sucks. The main reason they get done at all is quid pro quo: You have to eventually do code reviews for others or they'll stop reviewing your code.
If all anyone is doing is reviewi
Man selling software overstates its capabilities 3 (Score:3)
How many more of these Slashverts will we get here ?
Re: (Score:2)
Until the money runs out, we'll be burdened with this. Can hardly be soon enough.
Re: Man selling software overstates its capabiliti (Score:3)
An infinite number as long as we keep discussing them and creating page views and ad impressions.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashverts have been an issue for over a decade here.
Buggy Low Quality Software Is Ok? Sounds Fabulous? (Score:2)
What a wonderful world we have ahead. A world where "developers" and users embrace low quality and buggy software. 'Sure, it's dogshit. But that's OK!.'
And software that wants to ship can ship? Regardless of whether we want it to or not? Sweet.
We're living in the golden era. Panacea. Nirvana.
I welcome our new AI overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
> We're living in the golden era.
More like in the deep delusion before it all comes crashing down ...
Re: (Score:2)
> A world where "developers" and users embrace low quality and buggy software. 'Sure, it's dogshit. But that's OK!.'
[1]That happened decades ago [github.com]. "Bugs are not a big deal. Bugs are not a big deal! [Also, if you think bugs are a big deal, you're probably a Republican]"
[1] https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150
No. Capitalism = max revenue, and it has a profile (Score:2)
Share/stock-based companies exist to maximize profit by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost. There is no concession on price, unless the market mistakenly makes a price war; a 'race to the bottom' is against their interests. The price will be whatever maximizes overall revenue, which usually means pricing to high-value businesses, not low-end small consumers (example: GPU and RAM pricing) The difference between existing for shareholder value and existing for service is that service is inclusive and ena
Yes (Score:2)
But it will also make it much less secure, much less reliable, barely maintainable and not only a general waste of time, but of negative worth to use.
Cheap, accessible, good, chose any two. Or something like it. Using too few dimensions can make any crappy idea look good to the stupid.
Re: (Score:1)
Apologies for what seems like a repost - I just didn't understand the UI here at Slashdot. Can't delete it.
It won't be $200 for long. (Score:3)
They already lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The masses won't pay even the $200 they charge now, let alone the larger amounts they would need to charge to become profitable. These AI companies are cooked.
Re: (Score:1)
Bingo. If Claude can really create $100k of code for $200, how long will the price stay $200?
Head down til its over. (Score:1)
The reality filter is getting applied fast.
This is a good thing (Score:2)
We can skip the whole software enshittification process if software is shit from the beginning.
Whut? (Score:2)
If this is what it is, I don't want it... Anywhere...
Minority Report /s (Score:3)
ClippyAI: AIgenerated software tends to look plausible while hiding serious problems: it often has more bugs and technical debt, with duplicated, overcomplex code that no one fully understands or owns. It frequently misses security best practices, so common issues like injection and XSS slip in, enlarging the attack surface faster than teams can review and patch.
Because the model only sees your prompt, not your whole system, its code can clash with existing architecture, break integrations, and perform poorly at scale. Over time, teams risk becoming dependent on these tools, weakening core design and debugging skills while spending increasing effort just auditing, refactoring, and deleting the mess the AI produced in the first place.
Here's the problem (Score:2)
"Is the software I'm making for myself on my phone as good as handcrafted, bespoke code? No. But it's immediate and cheap"
Today's AI is just making software worse
I am hoping for future AI that can help experts make excellent, efficient, bug-free software
What we have today is just more slop
Nothing will ever get cheaper (Score:2)
If anything, AI will make pricing dynamically adjustable in real time based on individual customer profiles - meaning prices will be optimized between individuals to maximize profits.
RAD and VisualBasic 6 (Score:2)
Decades ago when magazines were gushing about the prospects of RAD, VB6 was released and had rapid uptake by all sorts of amateurs and non-programmer types. Here on slashdot, and by many professional programmers, it was widely panned as enabling all sorts of low-quality garbage because it very much lowered the barrier to entry, and could generate most of the boiler-plate code. This which was definitely resented by many. But all sorts of useful, one-off utilities (loads of shareware) were done using it by
Is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
> [W]hen the stars align and my prompts work out,
That doesn't sound like a frequent occurrence.
The metaphor "when the stars align" is usually used to indicate something is quite rare, in fact.
Re: (Score:2)
Except it's not. We just saw the capabilitiy prediction from increasing model size hit a wall. No credible researcher thinks this is anything more than a dead end path that will never get to AGI. So their "problem" is a little thing called "reality."
Re: Is it? (Score:2)
in the 70s/80s Ai already crashed and burned so hard nobody serious dared touch it for decades. Same with fusion. Rinse, repeat 50 years later...
legal weight (Score:4, Interesting)
Are the executives willing to have the AI write the text and numbers in their next government required financial filing?
The executives are legally required to certify those numbers in the USA by law:- [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Title III consists of eight sections and mandates that senior executives take individual responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of corporate financial reports. It defines the interaction of external auditors and corporate audit committees, and specifies the responsibility of corporate officers for the accuracy and validity of corporate financial reports. It enumerates specific limits on the behaviors of corporate officers and describes specific forfeitures of benefits and civil penalties for non-compliance. For example, Section 302 requires that the company's "principal officers" (typically the chief executive officer and chief financial officer) certify and approve the integrity of their company financial reports quarterly.[10]"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
Re: legal weight (Score:2)
It's a troll account. They have so many aggressively bad takes. Repeatedly talking about software devs being autistic. It's a shame because they do have some good points occasionally but they cover it over with some baiting waffle.
showstaopper and dogfood (Score:2)
Simply pointing out that the large tech companies are heavily pushing AI for everything don't trust it themselves enough on critical government filings when there are legal consequences.
Software is a different level of safety for many areas, except for medical devices, airplane and transport vehicles, air traffic control, power plant systems, etc.
The question needed to be asked by the media, wall street analysts, and social organizations is "What are some things which your company does not recommend its AI
Re: (Score:1)
Indeed. But this nicely shows how mentally incapable the AI fans really are.
Re: (Score:2)
He even has this little gem: "I don't expect to change any minds; that's not how minds work."
Funny, I was very much under the impression a solid argument does change minds. Of course, there's very little solidity to his arguments. He repeatedly says how poorly his results are.
Re: Is it? (Score:2)
O it does. Smart people will change their mind when presented with new facts. Dumb people tend to resist new facts that counter their opinion(assuming they even realise it counters).
Re: Is it? (Score:2)
Did some scripts with chatgpt... It does help an amateur like me getting things done fast. Things I normally would not even think about, are now a half an hour job. Do I trust it's output? No. I should at least scrutinize the code, dig in to the libraries it uses, ... Would I use it in a professional environment? Hell no!
Re: (Score:2)
It sounds like you are using it as a kind of replacement for StackOverflow or Google. I use it the same way, and it does seem to work reasonably well at that.
Re: (Score:1)
> Do I trust it's output?
What is this "trust" everybody keeps talking about?
We don't "trust" human -generated code either; we have QA processes.
Re: (Score:2)
Who's "we"? Certainly not you, as you don't seem to understand how garbage code passing unit tests doesn't make it understandable or maintainable going forward.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, "I knocked out some side projects"
Side projects. This is a running theme with the AI stories. Like receiving a mere sip of kindness from a complete asshole, it feels like mana from heaven when AI actually delivers something that could be called value.
And it does deliver value. It just doesn't do it at an confidence or quality rating that merits the projections right now.
The biggest "you're getting ahead of yourself" moment is the leap to agentic. How about we make it work before we make it work unsupe
Re: (Score:2)
My experience is that AI can handle simple stuff, if you carefully specify what you want. It can also help get you started along the right path, doing some initial research for you.
To get further than that, it needs hand holding from someone who understands where it is screwing up. Someone who can debug its code, and notice when it is doing things poorly.
For complex stuff it tends to just fail entirely.
That seems to match the experience of companies that claim AI is changing how they write software. They ar