> And there are going to be problems that come from using vast quantities of AI on a code base, especially of the form "created so much code my AI couldn't handle it anymore and neither could any of the humans involved". There's going to need to be a discussion on techniques on how to handle this. There's going to be characteristic problems and solutions.
replyThat's essentially the thing we are calling "cognitive debt".
I have a chapter with one small thing to help address that here - https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-pattern... - but it's a much bigger topic and will require extensive exploration by the whole industry to figure out.
Yeah, it's hard to even get started until we can go three months without a significant improvement in the AIs. Today's characteristic failures may not be 2027's characteristic failures. Example: Today I'm complaining that the AIs tend not to abstract as often as I'd like, but it's not hard to imagine it flipping until they're all architecture astronauts instead.
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