Because it's much, much faster to review a hundred lines of code than it is to write a hundred lines of code.

(I'm experienced at reading and reviewing code.)

This sounds like a recipe for destructive bugs and security vulnerabilities to slip into production.

Reviewing is really hard to do well. Like, on a psychological level. Your brain just starts nodding and humming along, pretending to understand. Humans have to consciously "perform review" to actually review. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling and checklists in aviation and health care, Tom Gilb's "Inspection" JPL-inspired spec review processes.

Even HN gets a steady drip of "look at my vibecoded project" -- "umm, you just leaked your API keys".

It's just that reviewing doesn't matter for a space invaders clone.

Reviewing isn't nearly as hard if you told the model exactly what to write already: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#t...

Simon, don't you fear "atrophy" in your writing ability?

I think it will happen a bit, but I'm not worried about it.

My ability to write with a pen has suffered enormously now that I do most of my writing on a phone or laptop - but I'm writing way more.

I expect I'll become slower at writing code without an LLM, but the volume of (useful) code I produce will be worth the trade off.

Reading other people's (or llm's) code is one of the best ways of improving your own coding abilities. Lazy people using llms to avoid reading any code is called "vibe coding", and their abilities atrophy no matter who or what wrote the code they refuse to read.

Absolutely false for anything but the most braindead corporate CRUD code.

We hate reading code and will avoid the hassle every time, but that doesn't mean it is easy.