Post by @jschauma@mstdn.social

2026-10-14 14:35 UTC

When I read that Anthropic source repository post with the "every bottleneck we remove immediately leads to a further increase in the amount of code we produce" quote, I just think back to Ken Thompson's famous quote: "One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code." "More code" is not a metric of success.

Replies (3)

@jschauma@mstdn.social 2026-10-14 14:37

(Also *giggle* at "we designed Scion’s client and protocols around a server that is always reachable", because that'll be fun when it inevitably isn't because apparently Claude doesn't know the fallacies of distributed computing or the CAP theorem, so good luck with that.)

Open ##5275667
@haitchfive@oldbytes.space 2026-10-14 14:40

@jschauma@mstdn.social More code can in fact be a metric of failure when functionality is duplicated and the same kind of thing is done in several different ways across a codebase. A problem only amplified by bad uses of AI.

Open ##5275697
@preinheimer@phpc.social 2026-10-14 14:42

@jschauma@mstdn.social One of the early bill gates biographies (like 1990s) talked about their early tension with IBM. Where IBM bragged about lines of code, and how Microsoft often shipped negative lines after cleaning up the mess IBM left behind.

Open ##5275698