I’ve been thinking about how generative AI is changing not just how we write code, but how we value it.
Here’s a specific example of what I mean: I started building a UI for a personal note organization app months ago. While Todo Lists are a popular tutorial project, making an app that matches your exact personal needs can become very complex and time consuming. I eventually decided it wasn’t the best use of my time. Recently I brushed it off again, since I still don’t have a good off the shelf solution that fits my needs. I quickly blew away most of the existing code and used an automated VSCode extension called Cline to recreate a better version within a couple of hours.
Another more general example calls back to all those gloriously ugly personal Geocities websites that popped up in the early days of the Internet. Except instead of HTML pages with tiled backgrounds, everyone is now spinning up entire frameworks and applications. This has already been a trend for a while, but what used to be a stream of DIY solutions has become a full-on flood now that anyone can generate working code quickly.
Why the ‘Why’
Think of it like the transition from hand-crafted furniture to IKEA. Master carpenters used to spend weeks perfecting joinery techniques. Now, the real value is in the design itself – figuring out how to make something functional, appealing, and mass-producible. The actual assembly became commoditized.
This isn’t just about AI making coding faster. It’s about a fundamental shift in what we consider valuable. When you can generate and regenerate implementation details almost instantly, the precious commodity becomes the product + architectural vision and problem-solving approach. In other words, the “why” of solving the problem becomes even more important to understand and communicate clearly versus the “how.”
Letting Go
Luckily, code is less environmentally damaging to dispose of than furniture. That still doesn’t make it easy. Even bad code quickly gets entangled in critical systems if it gets the job done. Creating new things is always more appealing and immediately gratifying than doing thankless surgery on a legacy codebase. This pattern leads to a deep, dark closet full of cruft and the sinking feeling that something in there is important but you don’t have the time to dig it out – until it starts to smell like smoke.
So just as it’s becoming easier to create code, we need to get better at letting it go. The ability to rapidly generate new code could make technical debt spiral out of control if we’re not careful. Every piece of code we keep around has a maintenance cost, whether it’s actively being worked on or not. It takes up mental space, requires security updates, and adds complexity to our systems. The more easily you can create new things, the more important it becomes to regularly clear out the old.
Implications
This shift has interesting implications for how we work, including:
- Spending more time on problem definition and system design
- Faster experimentation with different approaches
- Less emotional attachment to specific implementations
- Greater focus on business outcomes over technical perfection
- Codebase pruning as a regular practice
These are all topics that deserve their own posts. But at a high level, what does this mean for engineers and other tech builders? I suspect the most valuable skills going forward won’t be memorizing language features or design patterns, but rather developing strong intuition about system architecture, trade-offs, and knowing when to let go. The ability to quickly evaluate different approaches, communicate their implications, and recognize when code has outlived its usefulness will matter more than ever. Encouraging each other to treat removal as a healthy part of the software lifecycle rather than a failure, and sharing success stories of code retirement can help build positive momentum towards a more future-proof development process.
The code itself might be disposable, but the thinking behind it – and the discipline to maintain a healthy codebase – certainly isn’t.
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