Code is a grossly misleading term. It implies that programs must be incomprehensibly constructed by secret guilds of cryptographers, that the goal of programming is maximum obfuscation through inscrutable cleverness, and that the programmer‘s tricks of the trade are much like the old magicians “code” — explanations shall never be revealed.
The truth is code must be readable. Over time, the major cost of code is not the development effort, it is the amount of time spent on maintenance. Consequently, creating code that isn't unduly “coded” is always the wiser choice.
Peter Naur achieved fame in 1960 for the Backus-Naur Form (BNF). BNF is still widely used for describing computer languages. Twenty-five years later Naur stated that the programmer’s laboriously-gained understanding, or theory, of their work is more important than the work itself, that it transcends the actual work, “the primary result of the programming activity is the theory held by the programmers”.
Understanding that the value of a program resides inside the mind of the programmer should give pause to those who universally adopt Generative AI (GenAI). GenAI is not a mind. Entirely reliquishing code development to GenAI threatens to make all code mindless.
Agentic development is a mixed bag: sometimes GenAI is a fabulous timesaver, sometimes it fails; the biggest issue is that overreliance removes the opportunity for the developer to gain embodied understanding of the code, leaving the code, in the words of Peter Naur, “dead”—no one knowing what it does or how to maintain it.
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