{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreibcc5u2stqkcoukvqyyj73azl2njxuwgzs7kdp6wzy2y555kkyeli"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/png",
    "size": 89844
  },
  "description": "Whether or not you read the code, it's gotta be ert",
  "path": "/code-is-inert",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-09T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:a2rdzfdxkjwerrfrpbwcipb2/site.standard.publication/3jd443afc2222",
  "textContent": "> Code is inert. How do you make it ert?\n>\n> -Paul Ford,\n> What is Code<sup>[1]</sup>\n\nRight now, there is more inert code in the world than at any other point in\nhistory. Tomorrow even more inert code will exist, only to be one-upped again\nevery day after that. I wouldn't be surprised if soon one of the leading AI labs\nclaims something like, \"90% of all the code there ever was has been produced in\nthe last week.\" Produced, mostly generated, not written.\n\n<p style=\"max-width: 500px; margin-inline: auto;\">\n  <img\n    src=\"https://imagedelivery.net/iHX6Ovru0O7AjmyT5yZRoA/43d36ea8-9138-47b5-5caa-3d0c55ee8300/public\"\n    alt=\"Pie chart showing ~90% code ever produced in the last month and ~10% code produced since ~1834. Not based on real data, just a hunch\"\n  ></iframe>\n</p>\n\n90% might be an exaggeration. Paul Kinlan's\nnapkin math has language\nmodels taking credit for 5% of public commits on GitHub, but that doesn't count uncommitted nor unattributed LLM code.\nEither way, written or generated, much of that code is inert.\n\nWhat does it mean for code to be inert?\n\nOne reasonable answer is that code is inert whenever it's not going brrr, not\nrunning, not \"being executed.\" And of course, code can run locally on your\npersonal computer or elsewhere on some server. But in this essay, I mean code is\ninert when it's not deployed. Code that isn't deployed can't be easily shared\nand run, at least not without friction.\n\nThere was a meme in the early ChatGPT days where a programmer gets a text from a\nnon-programmer friend. It goes something like this:\n\n\n\nThe non-programmer friend's smile fades (one imagines) upon realizing they have\nno clue how to actually bring that code to life, how to make it ert. Since that\nmeme, companies like Lovable, Replit, and Bolt have largely solved that\nparticular disconnect for vibe coders, but even for you the programmer and your\ncollaborators there's still often a bridge of friction from inert code to\ndeployed code.\n\nWell, Val Town makes code ert.\n\nVal Town makes code ert\n\nConcretely, Val Town lets you write and run JavaScript. It's\na code editor in your browser, synced to our servers to run that code \"in the\ncloud\" (read: an AWS data center in Ohio). And whenever you save a file with\nyour code in it, we sync that code to our servers in 100 milliseconds.\n\nThere's no localhost, which means there's no deployment bridge to cross from\nlocalhost to production. Steve (one of Val Town's cofounders) told me that my\nfirst draft of this essay severely undersold this point about skipping\nlocalhost. He gave that feedback in a video articulating Val Town's core bet (on\nthe browser, against localhost) in a raw, honest sort of way that is hard to\nreplicate on a podcast or scripted video. With his permission, I'm including a\nclip of it here.\n\n<iframe\n  src=\"https://player.mux.com/7hcC4jeDEZEtMix7uO02JOoiqH009QczG4BqeBNY00QBUg?metadata-video-title=code-is-inert&video-title=code-is-inert\"\n  style=\"width: 100%; margin-block: 1rem; border: none; aspect-ratio: 133/90;\"\n  allow=\"accelerometer; gyroscope; autoplay; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture;\"\n  allowFullscreen\n></iframe>\n\nWhen code is always deployed, you get a satisfying instant feedback loop. And as\nimportantly, it's trivial to share your code and collaborate. It's why Val Town\nsuits a Computer Science professor\nteaching web dev fundamentals\nto university students; OpenAI's Head of Realtime\nlaunching their new voice model;\nand Kilo Code engineers\ncollaborating on a support agent.\n\nWhether or not you read the code, it's gotta be ert\n\nOur industry is in the middle of a debate over whether the code itself matters\nat all. Whether you the programmer need to read and review your LLM's code.\nHistorically, Val Town has defended the position that code does matter. Steve\nwrote a blog post a couple weeks ago that floated right up to the front page of\nHacker News with over 400 comments:\nReports of code's death are greatly exaggerated.\n\nBut whether or not you think code matters, it must be ert.\n\nUnsurprisingly, a lot of our users are vibe coding internal automations, agents,\nprototypes, and demos. They're writing less code than ever but generating\nmore code than ever (remember, \"90% of all code...\"). Many archetypes are doing\nthis sort of work: technical founders, go-to-market engineers, forward deployed\nengineers, product engineers and PMs, business analytics teams, and internal\ndevtools teams.\n\nA common sentiment is that it's super easy to produce the code, asymptotically\napproaching zero cost. Or at least it's getting faster, smarter and cheaper all\nthe time. But then the gotcha or bottleneck—the hard, slow part—is deployment.\nWe hear people say deploying is where they got stuck, or where their less\ntechnical teammate or friend gave up. And that's the whole point of Val Town.\nThere isn't any deployment because it's already, automatically, always deployed.\n\nThe code is ert.\n\n\\\\\\\n\nFootnotes\n\n(1) What is Code is Paul Ford's famous essay in the June 2015 issue of\nBloomberg Businessweek. B-list famous in some programmer circles, anyway. The\nessay is practically a novella: 38,000 words divided across seven sections\n(chapters?). The scrollbar on the web version is stubby, hard to even see, and\nyou get a sardonic \"Certificate of Completion\" at the bottom for reading it. The\nweb version also has all sorts of interactivity and easter eggs. Scroll through\nthe paragraphs too quickly and you'll see, \"Are you reading my essay, or looking\nat my essay?\" I've never read the print version, but I've searched around for an\nold copy more than once, so please do email me\nif you know where I could get my hands on one (seriously).",
  "title": "Code is inert. Val Town makes it ert"
}