Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first world

Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by Aperocky on Saturday June 06, 2026 @08:39PM (#48430640)

> ended up being a million lines of code

This almost reeks of "I've never cleaned up our code base because there is too much code, and didn't even bother having agents/LLM cleaning them up".

You almost never need a million lines of code - this includes your software, infra, testing and operational tools. You didn't ship the linux kernel in 3 weeks and you know it. The code is already speghetti and it achieve the basic functions OK but it will harder and harder to simplify and untangle and maintain.

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by bombcar on Saturday June 06, 2026 @09:16PM (#48430817)

Even the linux kernel doesn't need millions of lines of code; most of the actual LOC is device drivers, and you don't need all of them, you just need the ones for the devices you have.

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by Chu4eeno on Saturday June 06, 2026 @09:35PM (#48430911)

And Linux maintainers are actively pushing to radically cut down on the LOC by eliminating drivers etc.

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by girvo on Saturday June 06, 2026 @08:42PM (#48430651)

Yeah I cannot see how "we shipped 1 million lines of code in three weeks" is... something to be proud of haha

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by faustin on Saturday June 06, 2026 @10:28PM (#48431174)

They directly address routine code cleanup and regularly paying down technical debt near the end of the article.

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by Aperocky on Sunday June 07, 2026 @01:33AM (#48432120)

I stand corrected, but the LOC being advertised still make me doubt the efficacy of their process.

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by zahlman on Sunday June 07, 2026 @01:03AM (#48431977)

As a point of reference, 1MLOC is about the size of the entire Python standard library including tests, as well as stuff like IDLE. (Well, the Python part of the code. There's about half that much again of C in Modules/ .)

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Re:Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first w... by QuercusMax on Sunday June 07, 2026 @07:54PM (#48439872)

I ported/rewrote a million-LOC medical imaging workstation app over the course of 2 years with a team of 6. We had a full feature matrix with an extensive manual testing plan from previous work.

I suspect there's insane amounts of duplication.

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