LLMs: The Unforeseen Cost of Easier Coding

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized code writing, surpassing even the impact of the World Wide Web. However, this hasn't changed the fundamental truth that understanding code is harder than writing it; every line is tech debt. Introducing LLMs makes convincing teams to abandon old test suites and technical decisions even harder. LLMs readily produce new functions, leading to bloated, hard-to-maintain codebases, defying DRY principles. Historically productive engineering teams rely on deep toolchain expertise, but LLMs drastically lower coding costs, resulting in an explosion of ecological diversity in software environments. While LLMs might eventually improve code readability and reasoning, the current challenges are substantial.