Look, I understand the sentiment. I too want the code to be done properly, well-engineered and thought through. But recall, this is not our job. We are Professionals, and by modern definition, a Professional does whatever is best for the business. And the business doesn't care about the product - it cares about the product's ability to earn them money. If generating shit code, then throwing it away and generating anew at any sign of bug (or spec change) gets cheap enough, this is what the business will want to do. This is what being Professional will mean.
(You can imagine I don't hold "professionalism" in a very high regard.)
See also: basic goods in meatspace. In developed economies, people generally don't repair clothes anymore, and increasingly rarely anyone bothers with repairing appliances. It's cheaper to just throw it away and buy a new one, than to try and repair it. Hell, even construction and remodeling these days involves a lot more of "affix it here permanently; if you need to move it, just smash it and install a new one" approach.
Why wouldn't the same eventually happen with code?
This is an interesting thought experiment, but I don’t think it’s realistic. Software that “works” doesn’t necessarily work. And software that doesn’t work can cost catastrophic financial losses. Worse yet, those losses are going to be felt more painfully when they are incurred recklessly.
There is a reason that humans developed analytical problem solving as an alternative to trial and error: when you can do it, it’s more effective, and safer.
That’s not to say that disposable code doesn’t have some interesting implications! One of them is that experimentation becomes a lot cheaper, so it’s faster to navigate the search space of possible solutions to a problem. But just taking a “solution” directly from an LLM without validating its correctness is fundamentally unserious and will be punished by reality sooner or later.
Look, I understand the sentiment. I too want the code to be done properly, well-engineered and thought through. But recall, this is not our job. We are Professionals, and by modern definition, a Professional does whatever is best for the business. And the business doesn't care about the product - it cares about the product's ability to earn them money. If generating shit code, then throwing it away and generating anew at any sign of bug (or spec change) gets cheap enough, this is what the business will want to do. This is what being Professional will mean.
(You can imagine I don't hold "professionalism" in a very high regard.)
See also: basic goods in meatspace. In developed economies, people generally don't repair clothes anymore, and increasingly rarely anyone bothers with repairing appliances. It's cheaper to just throw it away and buy a new one, than to try and repair it. Hell, even construction and remodeling these days involves a lot more of "affix it here permanently; if you need to move it, just smash it and install a new one" approach.
Why wouldn't the same eventually happen with code?