Sean Goedecke: Models Write Code for $100 a Month, So Pick the Two Things You Still Beat Them At

seangoedecke.com / Hacker News·medium signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

In an August 30 post, Goedecke argues replacement-level engineering is over now that a model does the assigned task for roughly $100 a month, and names two remaining edges. First, deep codebase familiarity, because models make 'errors of ignorance' (not knowing an existing module) and 'errors of paranoia' (over-engineering for cases that will not happen) — catching the second takes the nerve to say the risk is acceptable. Second, technical communication, on his claim that LLMs got worse at writing as they got better at coding, and that readers reflexively skip AI prose; the failure state he names is becoming a 'meat proxy' who only routes requests through a model.