Key Points

Soohoon Choi argues that AI coding models will increasingly produce “good code” because economic incentives reward maintainability, reliability, and lower long-term maintenance costs.
The quote suggests competition among AI models will push winners to help developers ship trustworthy features faster, which favors simple, clean implementations over low-quality “slop.”
It frames the likely outcome as market forces discouraging slop in the long run, implying quality will be reinforced by adoption and economics rather than only user preferences.
The post is presented as a quotation collection on Simon Willison’s Weblog rather than a full analysis or experiment.

Simon Willison’s Weblog

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1st April 2026

I want to argue that AI models will write good code because of economic incentives. Good code is cheaper to generate and maintain. Competition is high between the AI models right now, and the ones that win will help developers ship reliable features fastest, which requires simple, maintainable code. Good code will prevail, not only because we want it to (though we do!), but because economic forces demand it. Markets will not reward slop in coding, in the long-term.

— Soohoon Choi, Slop Is Not Necessarily The Future

Posted 1st April 2026 at 2:07 am