Bryan Cantrill: 'The Peril of Laziness Lost' — LLMs Lack the Virtue That Makes Good Software

Bryan Cantrill / Simon Willison·high signal

Oxide Computer CTO Bryan Cantrill published a new essay arguing that LLMs fundamentally lack 'virtuous laziness' — the human constraint that forces crisp abstractions. Since work costs nothing to an LLM, they happily dump complexity onto 'a layercake of garbage' rather than simplifying systems. Simon Willison quoted the piece today, amplifying Cantrill's thesis that without human laziness driving design, LLMs will make systems larger, not better.