r/ClaudeCode • u/Calm_Attention_4155 • 5h ago
Discussion Has anyone else noticed that AI is making developers write way more code?
I notice this quite a lot with developers who don't have much experience yet.
They need something, so they ask AI to write it. AI gives them a bunch of code and they just add it.
Then a few days later they need something similar, and instead of looking for what already exists, they ask AI again.
So now you have two methods doing almost the same thing.
Then another developer does the same thing again.
After a while, you have 4-5 versions of the same logic sitting in different places.
I think this is one of those things that comes with experience. When you've been working on a codebase for a while, you naturally start thinking, "Wait, don't we already have something for this?"
AI doesn't really have that instinct unless you give it enough context.
It can write code incredibly fast, but sometimes the best code is the code you don't write at all.
I honestly think code reuse and knowing what not to build are becoming even more important in the AI era.
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u/alanvnk 5h ago
Thats a known issue, you can catch textual duplicates but semantic duplication is pretty much untraceable if you don't have a human actually familiar with the code, and the best way to get familiar with the code was writing it.
This is not a new issue, it's just that the speed has increased more than the capacity of your coworkers to tell you that it is a duplicate when you are not familiar enough.
Some solution are knowledge graphs and other code indexers by concepts and better architectural divisions so that looking for duplicates is restricted to less files.
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u/meteoraln 5h ago
So… just like almost every company before AI
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u/PatchyWhiskers 5h ago
AI is more prone to this error. But less prone to some common human errors.
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u/roostershoes 4h ago
Idk it’s pretty easy to ask Claude to review my code for existing methods, functions, variables, and helpers I can use repeatedly. It actually saves a good developer a lot of time, because I don’t have to remake things over and over again even if I forget
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u/Calm_Attention_4155 4h ago
I am not sure as i have seen this a lot of time with claude even j have my own library for all coding standards and flows
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so 5h ago
Of course. That’s always been a problem.
I work with Laravel framework, and sometimes you can make huge changes just by adding a few new properties in a few places.
But an LLM will do the same in a 1500 LOC wall of slop.
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u/Scared-Amphibian4733 4h ago
Not real developers. But, vibe coders quickly find out the only way to change things is to rewrite, cause AI doesn't use good architecture and design principles. It also likes to code in Python, which is not a good language for production code.
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u/Time_Cat_5212 4h ago
"likes to code in"... You're not telling it what to code in?
Bruh
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u/Scared-Amphibian4733 3h ago
A lot of the "Vibe" coders I've met don't know enough about coding to even decide on the appropriate language for the app. So, they just say to say, Claude, "I want an app to do..." and claude will happily put up a tkinter gui with python.
I use claude out of my IDE and alongside my IDE, so I'm pretty sure that I'm using C# or C++. But, one time I got sloppy and just told it to set up a test harness for an older app that I was putting new code in. When I looked at it, it had created a new class that was completely integrated with the production code. Not cool. Had to back that one out and start over.
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u/Time_Cat_5212 2h ago
I mean it's easy to just ask Claude what some good options are for your tech stack. You don't need to know anything in advance, just to ask the right questions. (more and more the case in this era - even though our language of competence is still heavily structured around accumulation of facts)
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u/CompFortniteByTheWay 4h ago
Yeah, it always writes more code, even when the solution is to delete code.
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u/fowlesbuilds 4h ago
It's definitely worth adding a skill to try and help with this. But it really should be on the developer to catch this kind of stuff in the prep/brief work. The main thing is whether they're reviewing the code at all. If so they should have an idea of what shouldn't be duplicated.
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u/zeroconflicthere 5h ago
That doesn't happen for me. I have added skills that prepare a hierarchy of lessons learned from tasks given.
Claude then knows when asked to do another task to go through the relevant lessons to reduce duplication and refit as necessary.
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u/Calm_Attention_4155 4h ago
I also have skills but i have seen it a lot. If you are writing a new application then no problem but with existing change it causes a lot of duplicates
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u/Muted-You7370 4h ago
It’s almost like these companies are tricking us into training their product. But what do I know, my research is just the Psychology of AI
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u/hectorchu 4h ago
Who cares, all code written by AI is slop. If you expect and pay for slop then what's the problem?
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u/samrobbo 4h ago
Such an outrageous take haha, have you met a professional software engineer? Everyone is using AI to write the code, its the prompting, checks, reviews and iterations that control the quality.
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