Code is now cheap, but making software that actually works is still expensive.

There's a logarithmic curve to quality.

What looks 80% done is 20% done.

Building with LLMs allows getting superficial results extremely quickly.

But it doesn't get that last 80% done unless you hound it to go into the details that you haven't even been deep in yourself.

It used to be that the PM and engineers who specified or wrote the code were deep in it, and also wanted to get to full quality to ship.

LLMs are basically producing Goodhart's law code.

Gilded turds, that the closer you look, and the more you try to pin down the details, the more you realize they aren't ready to ship.

A Xeno's paradox of infinite software.