code time tokens in 3 acts

status: useless Saturday's thoughts [about:] (programming) quality bound to be invalidated by some future machines of loving grace.

pithily: only real resource in life is time and time is tokens and tokens are money thus write good code to more quickly adapt to environment shifts.

(iii) is the one with questions. (i)&(ii) say: (1) shorter code is easier to maintain (thx sherlock) and (2) not necessarily produced by more capable models.

conclusion ~ periodically backtest and maintain peer review hygiene. feat request triage & adaptation differentiates future complex systems. iow: intelligence.

i. does code quality matter

pithily: if human alignment matters, some legible code matters (have your pick: prose, Claude, brain-to-brain, Python, God forbid -- Java).

cf. empirical evidence to demonstrate code quality can reduce overall maintenance cost (huh sounds familiar). Compress!

ii. do frontier models care

general purpose evals are irrelevant on specific-purpose use we all get it. some have at least thought through facets of good code.

frontiercode considers likelihood of merging in their score, demonstrating *more thinking* tends to produce larger & unnecessary edits (less compression).

iii. what is even code

models are increasingly built by entire companies. math people seem to think Lean is code. Terry the famous fox makes a point of a big math 1 movement.

We can tackle ever larger problems via coordination.

To the degree edge case analysis can be useful. In the limit the entire society builds the artifact.

pithily only real resource in life is time thus devise robust systems to sustain arbitrary environment shifts. well there we go again talking rewards.

what do you want to keep legible?

not to be confused with big pharma