开发者反思：AI 智能体让软件项目在共享理解消失后仍能推进

我觉得一些经过vibecoded的软件会以某种随机且出乎意料的方式发生变化。这让我想起了布鲁盖尔的《巴别塔》，画中展示了一个已经相当混乱的巴别塔景象。这个故事通常被讲述为一个关于骄傲与野心的故事，以及最终人们为什么不再说同一种语言。但它也讲述了团结如何让科技进步得以实现。

文本以一次技术升级开始：

他们彼此说：‘来吧，我们要造砖，把砖烧得透透的。’他们用砖代替石头，用泥代替灰浆。

他们把它用于一项文明工程：

‘我们要建造一座城和一座塔，塔顶能通天。’

但当上帝评估情况时，他关心的并不是砖：

‘人民是一个整体，他们都有同一种语言，[…]现在他们没有什么不能做的。’ 1：#fn-1

他们力量的来源是协调。他们共享一种语言，通过这种共享的语言，他们可以将自己的工作结合成任何一个人都无法单独完成的东西。上帝没有夺走砖或他们制造砖的知识，他夺走的是他们相互理解的能力，建设因此停止。

有一种吸引人的想法是，AI辅助编程意味着更好的工具，这让我们能够构建更宏大的软件。这在个人层面上确实成立，而且毫无疑问，拥有代理的开发者在改变代码库方面会显得极为强大。但大型软件项目从来不仅仅受限于个人编写代码的速度。它们受限于人们协调对所改系统理解的能力。

软件项目的共同语言不是英语或Python，而是对其概念含义、边界位置、关键不变式、权责所属以及系统为何呈现当前形态的共同理解。这种语言很少会被集中写在某处。它部分存在于文档和代码中，也存在于代码审查、对话、争论，以及向他人解释变更的经历之中。

在有代理之前，一些共享理解是通过摩擦来维持的。如果我想更改你的存储层，我通常需要阅读你的代码，向你提问，或者可能还需要与依赖该服务的其他团队协调。这很慢，而且这种慢很多是浪费，但并非全部。其中一部分是你对系统理解转化为我的过程，以及我们双方发现我们是否仍然对系统如何工作的理解一致的过程。这种摩擦能够同步人们的理解。

代理消除了大部分这种摩擦。我可以让代理添加OAuth，你可以让代理添加缓存，别人可以让代理从零开始重建数据库并将UI改成粉色。每个更改单独来看都是合理的。代码可以编译，测试可以通过，解释可以按需生成。我们并不一定需要互相沟通，甚至不需要获取那些更改曾经迫使我们必须学习的共享模型部分。

正如我以前多次说过的：代理不会感到痛苦，只有人类会。代理现在让我们能够操作系统中以前需要其他人才能处理的部分，以及那些以前人类会轮换操作的代码库。

当我查看一些vibecoded扩展项目时，代码库变成了巴别塔，并不是因为没人能交流，而是因为没人需要交流。每个开发者都有一个不知疲倦的翻译器，可以解释塔的某个角落，并实现他们所要求的任意局部修改。即使人类能共同推理的架构语言消失，代码更改依然不断落地。

但这不是圣经里的故事。巴别塔中，语言的丧失会停止建设，而在AI辅助工程中，在共享理解已经崩溃之后，建设仍然可以继续。没有即时的失败，这正是它让人感到好奇和有些迷惑的原因。塔并没有倒下，所以我们没有注意到失去了什么。它只是继续升高。

创世记 11:3-6, KJV：https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis 11:3-6&version=KJV.↩：#fnref-1

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I feel that some vibecoded software changes somewhat randomly and unexpectedly. That made me think about Bruegel’s “The Tower of Babel” which shows an already quite chaotic depiction of the Tower of Babel. The story is usually told as one about pride and ambition and ultimately why people no longer speak the same language. But it is also a story about the unity that makes technological progress work.

The text begins with a technology upgrade:

And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

They use it for a civilizational project:

let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven

But when God assesses the situation the bricks are not what concern him:

the people is one, and they have all one language, […] and now nothing will be restrained from them. 1：#fn-1

The source of their power is coordination. They share a language and with that shared language they can combine their work into something no one of them could build alone. God does not take away the bricks or their knowledge of how to make them. He takes away their ability to understand one another, and construction stops.

There is the appealing idea that AI-assisted programming means better tools which lets us build more ambitious software. That is certainly true at the level of the individual and without doubt a developer with an agent will be dramatically more capable of changing a codebase. But large software projects have never been limited only by how quickly an individual can produce code. They are limited by how well people can coordinate their understanding of the system they are changing.

The shared language of a software project is not English or Python but it is the common understanding of what its concepts mean, where the boundaries are, which invariants matter, who owns what, and why the system has the shape it does. This language is rarely written down in one place. It lives partly in documentation and code, but also in code review, conversations, arguments, and the experience of having to explain a change to somebody else.

Before agents, some of this shared understanding was maintained by friction. If I wanted to change your storage layer, I usually had to read your code, ask you questions, and perhaps coordinate with another team whose service depended on it. This was slow, and much of that slowness was waste but not all of it was. Some of it was the process by which your understanding became mine, and by which both of us discovered whether we still agreed about how the system worked. This friction synchronizes people.

Agents remove much of that friction. I can ask an agent to add OAuth, you can ask one to add caching, and somebody else can ask one to rebuild the database from first principles and make the UI pink. Each change can be reasonable in isolation. The code can compile, the tests can pass, and the explanations can be generated on demand. None of us necessarily has to talk to the others, or even acquire the part of the shared model that the change once would have forced us to learn.

As I said many times before: agents do not feel pain, only humans do. Agents now let us act in parts of the system where we would previously have needed other people and in code bases where the people would have revolved.

When I look at some vibecoded scaled-up projects the codebases become Babel not because nobody can communicate, but because nobody needs to. Every developer has a tireless translator that can explain a corner of the tower and make whatever local alteration they ask of it. The changes keep landing, even as the architectural language that would let the humans reason about them together disappears.

But it’s not the biblical story. At Babel, the loss of common language stops construction whereas in AI-assisted engineering, construction can continue after shared understanding has already collapsed. The lack of an immediate failure is what makes it curious and a bit disorienting. The tower does not fall, and so we do not notice what was lost. It just keeps rising.

Genesis 11:3-6, KJV：https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2011%3A3-6&version=KJV.↩：#fnref-1

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