The Real Cost of "We Can Just Build It Ourselves"
AI coding agents create build-vs-buy illusions; specialized runtimes aren't worth reinventing.
“coding agents have made us all feel like we can build anything. And maybe we can, but maybe we shouldn't all the time, right?”
A practitioner describes migrating from a homegrown runtime to LangSmith after accumulating edge cases and bugs, arguing the real cost was opportunity cost against higher-value work. The insight is timely: as AI code editors lower the perceived barrier to building anything, teams risk over-investing in undifferentiated infrastructure. The core signal is a cautionary counter-narrative to the 'code agents enable us to build everything ourselves' hype.