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Zach Kehs: Code can always get worse, unlike physical structures

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

Zach Kehs, in a quote shared by Simon Willison, posits that unlike physical buildings which collapse under infinite expansion, software code has no inherent limit to its degradation. He suggests that code can perpetually worsen through added layers of indirection or performance reductions. The article also briefly mentions a comparison grid for Astra, OpenAI's agents communicating via wikis, and Claude's reluctance to reproduce song lyrics. AI

IMPACT Suggests that the complexity and potential for degradation in software, including AI models, may not have inherent limits.

RANK_REASON The item is an opinion piece by Zach Kehs, shared by Simon Willison, discussing the nature of code degradation.

Read on Simon Willison →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

Zach Kehs: Code can always get worse, unlike physical structures

How we ranked this

Signal score
4 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Commentary
The item is an opinion piece by Zach Kehs, shared by Simon Willison, discussing the nature of code degradation.
Source corroboration
Single-source cluster
Only one publisher covered this so far. Single-source stories can still rank when the publisher is high-authority, but they lack cross-source corroboration.
Topics
opinion, other
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
Standard
On-topic for AI-industry coverage; kept in the public index.
Story freshness
Breaking (< 6h)
Fresh story with cross-source coverage still developing. Ranking may shift as more sources report.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [1]

  1. Simon Willison TIER_1 Deutsch(DE) ·

    Quoting Zach Kehs

    <blockquote cite="https://zachkehs.com/blog/theres_no_limit_to_how_bad_code_can_get/#9-ref"><p>If you continue to add floors and rooms to a building forever, it will collapse. Software faces no such constraint. The code can <em>always</em> get worse. There can <em>always</em> be …

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