> Code has always been expensive. Producing a few hundred lines of clean, tested code takes most software developers a full day or more. Many of our engineering habits, at both the macro and micro level, are built around this core constraint.

Wasn't writing code always cheap? I see this more like a strawmen argument. What is clean code? Tested code? Should each execution path of a function be tested with each possible input?

I think writing tests is important but you can over do it. Testing code for every possible platform takes of course much time and money.

Another cost factor for code is organization overhead, if adding a new feature needs to go through each layer of the organization signing it off before a user can actually see it. Its of course more costly than the alternative of just pushing to production with all its faults.

There is a big difference of short term cost and long term ones. I think LLMs reduce the short time cost immensely but may increase the long term costs. It will take some real long studies to really show the impact.