In 2025, the cost of writing code collapsed to zero. Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb, puts it plainly: code generation went from expensive and slow to free and instant, practically overnight. Lines of code stopped being assets and became disposable output.
That shift breaks a foundational assumption of software engineering. When code was hard to produce, you curated it. Now that it regenerates on demand, the old incentives for discipline, quality, and care no longer apply automatically. Majors argues this makes engineering rigor more necessary, not less.
The full piece goes further than the economics. Majors builds a case for what professional discipline looks like when the raw material of your craft is no longer scarce. That argument is worth reading in full at her Substack.
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