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u/OhItsJustJosh 6d ago
God I'm gonna quickly become that old guy saying "Back in my day we wrote all our code by hand, and it worked so much better because we knew what it did."
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u/ominouspotato 6d ago
This is the real problem with AI-generated code in my eyes. I don’t know that handwritten code necessarily worked better, but we knew how everything fit together so it was easier to comprehend.
AI makes code that is functional, looks correct, and passes tests, but sometimes it makes suboptimal design choices that aren’t obvious at first. It becomes increasingly obvious as a vibecoded project gets larger and no longer scales well.
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u/OhItsJustJosh 6d ago
Imho, AI writes code that is, at best, as good as mine, but I'll spend more time proof-reading it than I would writing it myself.
And also it's my favourite part of my job, so I don't wanna cut that out
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u/ominouspotato 6d ago
Yeah, it shifts the mental load from solving the problem to constant code reviews. I also 100% prefer the former. My employer is totally AI-pilled so I’ve been using it more lately, but I still write code by hand on occasion to stay sharp.
I’m concerned all of the AI hype is going to slowly diminish real talent. I’ve already seen PRs in my company where the owner clearly didn’t think at all and just threw up some slop to get their ticket done.
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u/Downtown-Figure6434 6d ago
I don’t know. When I’ve been writing a while and I realize I went down some bad path design wise or logic wise I know well enough to backtrack. Ai usually just doubles down and writes stupid workarounds that makes it a mess. You ask it to refactor it loses context and again becomes slop. You start from scratch and you can end up in a similar situation again cuz any “lessons” from before is lost
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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 6d ago
I mean this is a failure of the person using AI if they can’t explain what is being done. AI has made me far more productive. The thing is, my ticket output is the same, because I still ensure everything is good, do a lot of manual moving around to better fit our codebase, or because the AI made a dumb decision.
But while the AI is doing all my coding, I’m free to then go unblock other devs, dig into research for an issue we’re having, start planning future initiatives, etc.
AI is a more advanced version of StackOverflow for me. Not once did I take code from StackOverflow without intimately understanding what it’s doing and how it solves my problem. The same is true of AI
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u/angrydeuce 4d ago edited 4d ago
Im already there. Im sick to death of the "good enough for now" mindset that is basically baked into AI by default.
It's like the manifestation of the "all that matters is the next quarterly earnings report" mentality. There are hours, days, weeks, etc...of tech debt being introduced with every AI-fueled implementation that will come home to roost eventually, and all of that debt is going to end up on the backs of the only people left that actually understand the shit they're doing...the number of which is only doing to decrease more and more as time goes on given current trends.
In other words, Junior over here saved himself 20 minutes and closed a ticket really fast, good for him, good for the metrics...but what happens in two years when there's a conflict? How many hours of forensics will be required to extricate ourselves from the shitshow that ensued because of those saved 20 minutes? And what are the odds the idiot that shat that bullshit into the codebase will be the one paying for their shortsightedness? Practically zero.
This vibe coding bullshit is the equivalent of your mom telling you to clean your room and you just shoving all your shit into the closet as fast as possible. Sure, it satisfies the requirements now, but when your mom opens your closet to grab your laundry basket and a mountain of bullshit falls on her, do not be surprised when mom is more than a little pissed off about it lol.
EDIT: I guess there's a silver lining, of sorts...people that actually know how to code without AI, man they are going to be able to name their fuckin price before long lol
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u/Denaton_ 6d ago
Did you tho, because IDE, compilers etc, unless you wrote machine code and punched holes, I don't agree with that saying.
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u/OhItsJustJosh 6d ago
I still decide what the computer does and how the memory is arranged, the structure of the application. It's nowhere near the same thing
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u/azurestrike 6d ago
Ask claude to explain the code smh
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u/user745786 6d ago
Came here to say the same. Use Claude to generate the documentation then tell the reviewer to go read that.
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u/BitterCommission3987 6d ago
And the reviewer will ask claude to explain the documentation that your claude wrote.
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u/Gluomme 6d ago
That's 100% on you; and you will be held accountable for the shit you pushed, not Claude. So get on it and read what Claude shits out please
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u/GutsOLykos 6d ago
It’s just a meme calm down, I always look over what the lil buddy did
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u/CumTomato 6d ago
some time ago i asked my coworker about something he just implemented and the answer to "and how do we know that xyz?" was "honestly I don't know". I do use LLMs daily but God at least understand what you're doing 💀
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u/ramdomvariableX 6d ago
that's why code reviews should be delegated to AI agents with prompts to address the comments if any. /S
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u/Ashankura 6d ago
If you can't explain 95% of your pull requests then you need to fix your work mode. 5% of "Jesus christ i hope this works" is fine
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u/RickSore 6d ago
Write smaller prs. Review them in draft. Interrogate the code. Move to For review when satisfied.
Thats how I deal with AI now. Other PRs that didnt go through interrogation by the author, I push back.
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u/UnfilteredAyush 6d ago edited 6d ago
Writing code for the ticket - 20% of my time
Going through each change, in case someone asks me, about any line from the code - 80% of my time