The pattern that spreads

The article examines how codebases develop rigid structural patterns not through deliberate design but through copy-paste replication, where the first module's arbitrary choices become unquestioned conventions across dozens of modules. It highlights how AI code assistants amplify this problem: trained on pattern frequency rather than quality, they can propagate both good and bad patterns across entire codebases at unprecedented speed, turning slow-spreading copy-paste debt into rapid, confident replication.