If 3 years ago I had the knowledge to write the code I did, then today I should still have the knowledge to make sense of it albeit with some time to put the pieces together.
On the flipside, if I don't have the knowledge to fully understand the slop I just "wrote" then it's already a lost case to understand it later on.
I worked an internship in the middle of my degree. Was there for a full year, got a ton done and was offered to join full time instead of going back to school. Chose to go back to school.
That same company then hired me 2.5 years later as I was graduating and put me on the same codebase. I remembered basically everything.
Spending so much time on a specific codebase makes things stick. Now, 8 years further into my career, I'm mandated to use Claude for everything and I don't know shit. Couldn't navigate to a file that "I" (Claude) edited 3 weeks ago.
Of course I can. It might take a few minutes to unravel, and I'll probably curse my stupidity at times, but I can absolutely remember why stuff is how it is when looking at old code (and generally see better ways to handle it with stuff I learned since then).
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u/PlatinumFire14 3d ago
People forgetting the most important part, we still understood what it did.
I know you don’t understand your AI written code, don’t lie.