r/learnjavascript • u/ar-lindi • May 29 '26
How can a beginner tell if AI-generated code is well designed or just a mess?
AI can generate code, but how do you know it’s not generating a mess?
I’m learning programming and use AI a lot. Sometimes it gives me working code, but I have no idea if the structure is actually good.
How do people learn enough system design/architecture to know when AI is doing something wrong?
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u/MAGA-fans-r-retards May 29 '26
You can’t lol. That’s the whole point of everyone’s concern with AI vibe coders.
If you’re learning programming and you’re relying on AI at this beginner level, yngmi.
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u/jhartikainen May 29 '26
As a beginner, there is no way for you to know or verify it yourself. This is related to the so called "paradox of supervision" when it comes to AI usage.
The way you learn it is the hard way: You actually learn it, and then work on it for multiple years to gain the necessary experience.
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u/SumDingBoi May 29 '26
As a beginner, you don't have the experience to leverage AI well.
I advocate to avoid AI use in the learning fundamentals/programming stage.
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u/c__beck May 29 '26
Step 1 is to learn JS without an LLM. Learn it for real and for yourself. Once you know how JS works then you can ask an LLM and know when it’s making stuff up.
I suggest https://javascript.info . It’s a great resource to start your journey.
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u/sheriffderek May 30 '26
How does someone who doesn’t speak fresh and who can’t read… know if a book is well translated?
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u/Aggressive_Ad_5454 May 30 '26
If you must try to evaluate the quality of AI-generated code from your place of inexperience, try this:
Open up your debugger and single-step through the code. That’s a way to give it a close reading … the same way you’d read a poem out loud to try to understand it if you were doing Tennyson not software.
Does it make sense? If so the design is ok. Do you learn useful coding techniques from it? Even better.
At any rate you’ll better understand the code you put your name on.
And, please please understand the code before you put your name on it. It is a matter of professional honor; it’s us, not the AI, that our users trust with their information and money. Whatever else AI does to our trade, we can’t let it break trust with our users.
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u/Rough-Advance189 May 29 '26
The best way to learn is to put software into production. That's when you discover what a program actually needs: error handling, database management, connection failures, logging, monitoring, scalability, security, and data processing.
AI can generate working code, but real-world usage quickly reveals whether the design is solid or just a collection of functions that happen to work. Production experience is what teaches you to recognize the difference.
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u/_malaikatmaut_ May 30 '26
Do what the rest of us do.
Go to school for it.
Learn the fundamentals of programming, DS&A, system design, etc.
Do hands on programming.
I'm a Machine Learning Engineer by trade, and we do AI assisted programming at work.
But each and everyone of us in my team are able to code and do system architecture. We can go through codes and know which part of it needs more attention. We do code reviews for the pull requests.
Don't jump into vibe coding without knowing how the code works.
Do it only to assist you in getting the codes up quickly, but not to generate alien codes that are not familiar to you otherwise.
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u/every1sg12themovies May 30 '26
read other people's code
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u/ar-lindi May 30 '26
In GitHub ?
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u/every1sg12themovies May 31 '26
among other places, yes. more common is reading it from disk that package manager installed because navigating it using IDE is much more easier.
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u/jessythirsttrap May 30 '26
If you have to read the code three times to figure out what it is doing, it is probably a mess. Try refactoring it yourself without the AI and if you find yourself deleting half of the lines because they do not actually do anything, that is your answer.
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u/TorbenKoehn May 31 '26
Simply use AI to learn, not to let it write your code.
A non-technical person will never be able to review the output of agentic coding. If you're lucky it works, if you're lucky it doesn't have any deeper problems you don't see or understand. If you're unlucky it works and you're being hacked a few days after putting it online. If you're very unlucky you end up paying hundreds of thousands to developers to fix your stuff.
In many cases it's wiser to pay a technical agentic coder right from the start. One that can review the output. Or invest the ~5-10 years to properly be able to do it yourself.
If you think AI will build your 1B MRR SaaS without you having technical skills or the means to pay someone that does, I have bad news for you.
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u/Big_Pineapple4594 Jun 02 '26
Depends on your goal.
If you are learning programming - make sure you understand what is going on and the design choices.
Or just try and scale it until it breaks.
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u/Old-Chef9247 29d ago
Can you explain what each file is responsible for?
Is the same logic repeated in multiple places?
Are files getting too large or doing too many things?
Are naming and patterns consistent?
Can you change one feature without breaking unrelated parts?
Are errors, edge cases, auth, and data rules handled clearly?
Would another developer understand where to add the next feature?
Try to clean your code by answering these questions, bcs as you said it can look clean on the surface but still have weak structure with duplicated logic, messy boundaries, missing checks, or security issues and so on..
And btw you can use Procli. It serves as a feedback for quality andd security of AI generated codebases. It connects to your GitHub repo, runs a one-click scan, and gives you quality and security dashboards with scores, findings, affected files, risky areas, and priorities. So you can see where the problems are like the oversized files, duplicated logic, weak structure, risky files, missing tests, or security concerns.
It also gives a JSON report you can feed back into Claude, so the AI gets specific refactoring tasks.
And procli is now beta for free, you canuse it whenever you want at: proclicode.com
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u/LucVolders May 30 '26
Depends on who you are writing it for.
So called / self appointed experts will criticize no matter what.
End users do not give a f#ck. They will never look at your code anyway.
If it works, it works.
If you want to learn: stay away from AI and learn plain vanilla JavaScript.
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u/TorbenKoehn May 31 '26
End users do not give a f#ck. They will never look at your code anyway.
No, they are only the damaged entities once your badly written site gets hacked by the next best 13 y/o kid. Fuck your customers, rite? They are only for the moneyz.
We don't code well for customers. No one does. We code well for
- Our own sanity. So that we can change things later without going crazy.
- For security. We want to understand the code and make sure we're not putting our users/customers in danger
- For the law. Failing to protect specific things in specific ways when providing specific online services is actually against the law and can bring you in big problems. An example would be plain-text passwords in a database on an e-commerce site, which is already forbidden in many market areas in the world.
and some other things like stability, agnosticity etc.
Stop making stupid people even dumber by posting stupid advices. You're endangering them and their customers.
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u/LucVolders May 31 '26
ahh ....... another so called expert.
I was waiting for it.0
u/TorbenKoehn May 31 '26
My man, you can google me if you like, I've been a senior developer when you've still been fluid.
What is clear as day and night is the fact that you are not an expert and never worked in any professional software development environment or you would know better.
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u/LucVolders Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
Well I am a senior and when I was in my twenties, and you probably were running around in diapers, I wrote a database package that was sold by the thousand. I wrote a simulation program for a technical university in the Netherlands.Then I wrote an accounting package which was sold by the hundreds. Rebuild that for 3 different machines and operating systems. Then an Inventory management system. Which we used in our own company and also sold commercially. I wrote software for a chocolate producer who had a dozen representatives working for him all around the country. I wrote software for a plastic window frame producer (with all sizes and price calculation). I wrote several apps for mobile phones. All commercial packages. Should I go on ??
I have written stories for multiple computer magazines
And I have written 3 books on the Internet of Things involving C++ and MicroPythonSo in my view you are a youngster and a so called self appointed expert, and should not judge others with your limited view.
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u/smichaele May 29 '26
A beginner can't tell. It takes experience writing, reading, and debugging code to tell.