37 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
37 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
# The Great Agent Debate
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Two opposing views from credible engineers. Both are essential context.
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## Armin Ronacher — "Building Pi With Pi"
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**Who**: Creator of Flask, Sentry co-founder, Pi maintainer.
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**Post**: [lucumr.pocoo.org](https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/5/24/pi-oss/) (May 24, 2026)
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**Key arguments**:
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- Pi is built with Pi (agents building agent tools)
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- The harness matters most
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- We're not at full autonomy yet
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- AI-generated PRs create new OSS maintenance burdens
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## George Hotz — "The Eternal Sloptember"
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**Who**: Founder of comma.ai, first iPhone jailbreaker.
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**Post**: [geohot.github.io](https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/05/24/the-eternal-sloptember.html) (May 24, 2026)
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**Key arguments**:
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- "Agents cannot program" — output is broken in increasingly hard-to-detect ways
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- It's not "you're using it wrong" — he tried all models, harnesses, prompts
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- Agents hurt large organizations more (slow feedback loops)
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- "Golden era for slop, dark age for quality"
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## The Synthesized View
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| Armin Says | George Says | We Teach |
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|-----------|-------------|---------|
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| Harness is the product | Output is slop | The harness catches slop (M3) |
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| Not at dark factory yet | Agents can't program | Use agents for what they're good at (M1) |
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| Built with Pi is real | Slot machine polish problem | Verifier finishes the polish (M3) |
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| OSS maintenance is hard | Large orgs will suffer | Production patterns prevent this (M5) |
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Both are right. Agents produce slop. The harness, verification, and production patterns turn slop into shipped quality. Without the harness, Hotz wins.
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