Conceptual integrity and counting lines of code

per Simon Willison's Weblog, a recent podcast with Claire Giordano explored how AI agents are reshaping software productivity, noting that while a thousand lines of debugged code can be generated, cognitive limits still demand teamwork. The discussion contrasted the old discipline of estimating effort by hours against today’s ability to quickly justify features, echoing the Winchester Mystery House analogy for sprawling codebases. The key point is that faster output brings a new challenge: preserving conceptual integrity before the codebase grows unchecked.

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