korrents

← People and their mental models

Vicki Boykis's mental models

3 claims Vicki Boykis made fit 3 mental models. Most often: Everything decays without maintenance, Feedback loops, Incentives. Everything they said here.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Everything decays without maintenance

Institutions, code, cities and knowledge run down by default; keeping something alive is work that has to be paid for.

Used by 27 others

As AI makes it easier to generate code, teams must delete code more aggressively or be overwhelmed by accumulated complexity.

  1. Vicki Boykis Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems But in this new era, we must delete code even harder, because if we don't constantly remove complexity, we are going to drown in generated kudzu slop that overtakes codebases. Bad code is kudzuvickiboykis.com · 1 Sept 2026All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsBut in this new era, we must delete code even harder, because if we don't constantly remove complexity, we are going to drown in generated kudzu slop that overtakes codebases.

    ↗Bad code is kudzuvickiboykis.com

    1 Sept 2026

Feedback loops

Shorten the loop between doing and finding out; whatever a loop rewards is what you become.

Used by 60 others

AI code generation's default reward loop works like a slot machine and undermines skill retention.

  1. Vicki Boykis Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems Code generation, in its default mode, is antithetical to skill retention, particularly because its UX affordances are reminiscent of a slot machine's: you pull the lever, you get a reward (a solution to your coding problem.) We should be more tired than the modelvickiboykis.com · 28 May 2026All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsCode generation, in its default mode, is antithetical to skill retention, particularly because its UX affordances are reminiscent of a slot machine's: you pull the lever, you get a reward (a solution to your coding problem.)

    ↗We should be more tired than the modelvickiboykis.com

    28 May 2026

Incentives

Look at what people are rewarded for; it explains more behaviour than what they say, your own included.

Used by 84 others

Deleting code goes unrewarded in software careers, which is part of why teams keep shipping new features instead of removing old ones.

  1. Vicki Boykis Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems Deleting code is hard, particularly because it's a thankless task that usually doesn't go on promo packets, which is why we end up shipping hundreds of thousands of lines of sparkle emoji magic wand AI features, but deleting code is silent. Bad code is kudzuvickiboykis.com · 1 Sept 2026All korrents from this piece
    Their wordsDeleting code is hard, particularly because it's a thankless task that usually doesn't go on promo packets, which is why we end up shipping hundreds of thousands of lines of sparkle emoji magic wand AI features, but deleting code is silent.

    ↗Bad code is kudzuvickiboykis.com

    1 Sept 2026