A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by proc0 on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:48PM (#50433407)

Yeah this is what happens when you think code is the product. It's really the understanding and also the design of the software that is the "engine" of value, and the problem is that it's hard to justify spending money to build something that is intangible and might be visible in the future.

When non-technical people call the shots, they will rarely bet on spending time and effort on designing things properly because they can't see the value and it's hard to communicate and convince others of its business value.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by marginalia_nu on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:49PM (#50433419)

If only we'd tried shipping all the understanding to coding sweatshops in India with identical disastrous results 20 years ago, maybe we would have learned from that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by rabidheuristics on Monday November 09, 2026 @06:00PM (#50433569)

I see what you did there.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by bdangubic on Monday November 09, 2026 @06:20PM (#50433784)

on the flip side of this witty comment, (very very very) few of these that went to Bangalore etc ever returned home…

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by keeda on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @02:12AM (#50437063)

This, but unironically. I mean, it was such a disaster that the Indian IT outsourcing industry grew from < $10B total revenues around Y2K to $250B today ;-)

For reference, I've actually written in detail on the parallels before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44944717

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by proc0 on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @03:53PM (#50446176)

Right, that's when it really started, and also why AI hype is so high. It's super-charging this tendency to scale things by outsourcing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by austin-cheney on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:56PM (#50433507)

Also think about it in terms of start up value. The value of your business is a combination of employee expertise and customer/client relationships. Everything else can be reverse engineered. If all you have is a product written by AI then who cares?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A year after the 100% AI mandate nobody understands our code by proc0 on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @03:49PM (#50446133)

Correct. There is definitely a correlation between effort and value, although sometimes it's not direct because you can get away with shortcuts.

[ Parent | on HN ]