Perl wisdom in the age of LLMs

Bryan Cantrill of Oxide mentioned Larry Wall's virtue of laziness in a blog post about working with LLMs: The Peril of Laziness Lost.

Comment on Perl wisdom in the age of LLMs

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Re: Perl wisdom in the age of LLMs by LanX (Saint) on May 14, 2026 at 19:54 UTC
Yes, LLM generated code tends to replace brain with muscles in amateur hands. It's like buying bigger hardware instead of fixing an O(n²) algorithm to O(n). One doesn't need to be a mathematician to see that this is not sustainable in the long run. But devs judging (and being judged) by LOC will miss the point at first, before their bubble code becomes unmaintainable. We are entering an age of steaks being served with throwaway plastic forks and knives. And the cooks proudly blog about it. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :) see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply]

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Re: Perl wisdom in the age of LLMs
by LanX (Saint) on May 14, 2026 at 19:54 UTC

It's like buying bigger hardware instead of fixing an O(n²) algorithm to O(n).

One doesn't need to be a mathematician to see that this is not sustainable in the long run.

But devs judging (and being judged) by LOC will miss the point at first, before their bubble code becomes unmaintainable.

We are entering an age of steaks being served with throwaway plastic forks and knives.

And the cooks proudly blog about it.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)

see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}