The Best Engineers Write Less Code | The Grumpy DevThe Best Engineers Write Less Code<br>2026/05/20
Coding is expensive and time consuming<br>We are living in an age of mass denial. Some very smart people are telling us that we no longer need to write good software because LLMs can generate code now. But terrible software is still terrible software, whether it was written by Claude Code or by a human who did not know what they were doing. The computers running it are still real. Latency is still real. Complexity is still real. Maintenance is still real. All the old rules still apply. There is going to be an enormous amount of work fixing the slop now being pushed into production. But I digress.<br>How much does software cost<br>Good software takes time, and businesses measure everything in it. You see, the time it takes to make something directly impacts how much the thing costs to produce. This is why your manager/director/vp is so interested in how long it will take. Time is literally money. The company is cutting checks twice a month to everyone involved. This is why they are so excited about AI, because it is faster(cheaper).<br>Be a great employee<br>The best thing you can do for your stakeholder is avoid building unnecessary things. Every feature carries ongoing costs: maintenance, debugging, infrastructure, support, future migrations, and cognitive overhead. Senior engineers understand this instinctively. Figuring out what should not be built is one of your biggest contributions. On the road to becoming a senior engineer, you will go from “I can do it boss, it will take a couple of days” to “Hey, why are we building this in the first place”. That second question is very very important. Remember kids: code is a liability unless it solves the right problem.<br>This is not what I meant.<br>If you take one thing away from this post, it is this. Building the wrong thing for your stakeholder is the worst. You just spent time (which is money), on making something. It is not what they wanted. Now they have to see how much of what you made they can keep. Then more time to do something else. Don’t get me wrong. This kind of thing is inevitable. Even if you make exactly what they wanted two months ago, business needs may change. But there is a mitigation strategy.<br>Yes, It’s Agile<br>Forget about ceremonies and pantomime. The important part is balancing production with feedback from stakeholders. If you are asked to make something, first make sure both you and the stakeholder are aligned on why it is needed. Have a little chat. You may even tweak some requirements to make it happen faster (cheaper). Then pick an interval, not too long. Show your progress. Get feedback. This way you won’t be making the wrong thing (spending company money) for too long. Great engineers are not measured by how much code they produce. They are measured by how much value they create relative to the complexity they leave behind.<br>What should you do with the free time you have? Go delete some code.