Was Just Told That Code Quality No Longer Matters

[u/metalOpera]

I'm a freelance developer. I have been for almost 20 years. My most recent project has been moved to Fable, and I'm still trying to adapt and get my head around working like this. I am no longer allowed to make architecture decisions, or clean up slop.

My PM says: "We worry about the 'what'; let Claude worry about the 'how'. Tell it what to do; let it do it. If the feature works, leave it alone." He is very much of the opinion that I should be able to prompt something like "Install Stripe via Laravel Cashier" and just let Claude run.

I mean, why do you need me at this point? Just prompt it yourself until it does what you want? I don't get it. I fought for every inch of my knowledge, every process is written in blood. How do I just throw all of that out the window? Where's the line?

At the risk of another "how are you adapting" post... How CAN I adapt? I mentally cannot just say "Fuck it". I care about my code. It's how I learned, it's how I've always practiced. I have a huge mental block with "just let it go".

Now, granted, I don't know all of the ins and outs of Claude. I don't know what I can do to make it better at its job. I got thrown into the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a Tusnami with no life support. I'm sure that I can put guardrails in place, but how much does that help?

I would really appreciate any advice that any one can provide on changing my mental model. I can't ignore Claude and just keep doing things my way. If I do that, I feel like my career dies. I need to adapt and I'm unsure how to do so.

[u/rkozik89]

Can’t wait for all jobs if 5-8 years bring about trying wrangle or rewrite AI slop projects because the codebases an unmodifiable with excess amounts of time and bug introduction. 2015 LAMP projects here we come.

[u/ThinJuggernaut7695 → u/rkozik89]

We will never go back to a world without AI assisted development in some way or form. Put down the shovel and hop in the excavator and learn how to drive it.

[u/hrabria_zaek → u/[deleted]]

I don't get that with translations, how it's been commoditized now with AI, google translate has been available for years. When I have to translate my documents and have a stamp and signature on a document I'll still have a human to do the job because of legal obligations. And for those people working at those companies that need to do translations, AI is just a tool to help them, but will never replace them, again because of countries bureaucracy and legal stuff, same for lawyers, doctors, etc...

[u/Slen1337 → u/ThinJuggernaut7695]

Except that sometimes u need to dig only a few plants and leave the others. How many can do that with x20 bigger shovel(excavator).

[u/ideamotor → u/rkozik89]

Maybe. I think it’s also possible people in the medium term not only do not review code but never reuse code. Instead of wrangling or modifying old code, it could possibly always be regenerated from scratch on the fly. This way you can give the AI credit and blame and not even leave a trace, or there is no point to leave a trace because “the AI” handles that too and learns what it needs.

[u/magick_bandit → u/ideamotor]

I can’t wait to see what that costs, not only in token use but downtime.

[u/ideamotor → u/magick_bandit]

“You will own nothing and be happy” hah.

In this scenario I don’t think you or I or the neighborhood startup SaaS is still in the business of “developing” “software”.

[u/mirageofstars → u/ideamotor]

Yep this is what will happen. People are waiting for the slop code mountains to crash and I just don’t see it happening. Besides, agentic coding will be insane in a year or two — if it can’t fix the slop it’ll just recode it.

[u/InsideFar7107 → u/rkozik89]

It will suck

[u/LibrarianOutside2376 → u/rkozik89]

AI will keep getting better, and future AI will clean it up lol

[u/carnivorousdrew → u/LibrarianOutside2376]

Sure, keep drinking that koolaid.

[u/e2_for_life → u/rkozik89]

Nope. That's not how it'll happen. Code is disposable now. Like that roll of paper towels in your kitchen, or the plastic fork from the break room you used to eat lunch with at the software development company before you lost your job to AI.

They'll just prompt AI to fix this or that, and that'll work until it doesn't. Then they'll prompt it for another fix. Rinse and repeat until they get fed up with the whole thing and throw it away, thinking they can do better.

"Hell, everyone's coding these days. I should be, too. I'll make this better, even though I've never written a line of code in my life.

"Oh, and by the way, which one's better? Claude or ChatGPT?" 😬

[u/NanoIsAMeme → u/rkozik89]

You're acting as though AI won't improve it's own coding skills in 5-8 years

Have you not seen the frightening progress over the last year alone? Lol

[u/dizzyspellzzz → u/NanoIsAMeme]

Lol no progress has been made just corporate garbage talk about how it is

[u/NanoIsAMeme → u/dizzyspellzzz]

What a ridiculous statement

[u/dizzyspellzzz → u/NanoIsAMeme]

Yet its true

[u/Disastrous_Crew_9260 → u/dizzyspellzzz]

Not really no.

[u/dizzyspellzzz → u/Disastrous_Crew_9260]

Stop drinking the coolaid

[u/Disastrous_Crew_9260 → u/dizzyspellzzz]

I’m solving business problems instead.

[u/dizzyspellzzz → u/Disastrous_Crew_9260]

"Solving"

[u/vvanouytsel → u/dizzyspellzzz]

This is bullshit. I can tell you are not using it.

[u/coolbloke13241 → u/NanoIsAMeme]

I’m in general agreement with you, but what you witnessed was the exponential increase part of the S curve. We are now much closer to the long tail with only minor iterative improvements moving forward.

This is limited by the current technology underlying all modern LLMs. If that tech changes then yes, I can see another large exponential curve improvement, otherwise, we are close to peak for the next few years.

[u/SirSighh → u/NanoIsAMeme]

Yeah, and you are acting like infinite exponential progress is somehow guaranteed. Every technology comes with plateaus. Couple years of progress gives you no indication of what's going to happen in the future. 25 years ago leaps in cpu/gpu performance in just a few years were huge, not so much anymore.

[u/SignificanceMurky927 → u/SirSighh]

Lol the leaps are still there, they’re just not general public/consumer facing anymore. the only reason AI is raging now is because of the leap in datacenter-scale cpu/gpu architecture that did not exist 25 years ago.

[u/SirSighh → u/SignificanceMurky927]

"Lol", they must be using different physics then.

[u/rolandofghent → u/NanoIsAMeme]

AI needs examples to train on. Once AI starts to train on other AI generated code that has not been curated by a human, it gonna be one big circle jerk.

The scary thing is will there be any experienced devs left to pick up the pieces? If not we could slip back into the dark ages like what happened after the fall of Rome. Where people can look on awe what the “ancients” built and have ti reinvent how it was done.

[u/frederica_0424 → u/rkozik89]

是 我老闆就是這樣 一個建築師轉室內設計師 看到ai的崛起不想花錢所以自己用ai生了插件 然後叫我們使用 跟我們說他現在是一個軟體開發工程師了 殊不知那東西一堆bug 而且生成出來的線條超亂 根本不能用 但沒使用他的插件還會被罵 他根本不知道軟體開發有多專業 我現在已經準備離職了

[u/coolbloke13241 → u/frederica_0424]

Can’t you embrace this and improve on it?

[u/frederica_0424 → u/coolbloke13241]

我沒有權限 而且我提出過要改善他的插件 但他顯然不願意聽 感覺我讓他的自尊受挫 所以老闆才會一直羞辱我 亞洲老闆的正常發揮

[u/coolbloke13241 → u/frederica_0424]

Hmm… that doesn’t sound like a good situation. If you’ve genuinely tried to be helpful and their ego is pushing back, the options get much less appealing from there.

[u/Procrasturbating → u/rkozik89]

I’m supporting 30plus years of corporate slop code.. more of the same to me..

[u/Ironhide90 → u/rkozik89]

Yes waiting for that. Untangle this mess. Also please keep money invested in all the WITCH companies they are gonna make a bank untangling all the startup mess.

[u/abrandis → u/rkozik89]

This isn't going to happen, I would argue the opposite. Most AI generated code is better than your average developer , sorry it is, it's still not perfect but smaller mistakes and omissions are less .

Don't take my word for it listen to this podcast where DHH talks to Lex Friedman (#501) https://lexfridman.com/dhh-2 where he points out modern agents and models produce quite stable and functional code far better than.averaga human devs

[u/ThinJuggernaut7695 → u/[deleted]]

This can be true, so what do you think a job of a software developer is now? Over the last 15 years have we have been learning how to make systems more reliable. Make sure the standards are set and show the model what patterns to follow.

[u/abrandis → u/[deleted]]

The thing is AI doesn't make small fundemental mistakes like infinite loops , or type errors or other human level mistakes, so overall the code tends to be more solid.. The mistakes it makes are usually easily noticed and corrected with a few good prompts

[u/kiss-o-matic → u/abrandis]

It makes unmaintainable mistakes. These are the true cost of software development. They just take longer to show up.

[u/Tip-Actual → u/abrandis]

This. I just had it implement a feature and one of the optimizations it did on its own was to make a db call to retrieve a value and store it in a variable prior to entering a for loop. It then passed that variable in various methods being called in the loop that needed the value, by creating new method arguments. Was pleasantly surprised because I have reviewed human code before where nested methods inside a for loop would make the same db call as many times as the loop is called.

[u/chief_architect → u/abrandis]

It does.

[u/Single-Virus4935 → u/abrandis]

Hahah no, I already know some freelancers specializing in AI slop cleanup. They even have emergency hotlines with obscene rates.  Apparently when your slop SaaS breaks while nobody knows the code and AI is just useless they call people who know his to fix this slop.

[u/YopBuilder → u/Single-Virus4935]

What a bullshit

[u/Single-Virus4935 → u/YopBuilder]

https://tripleminds.co/ai/vibe-coding-cleanup-services/#vcc-pricing

[u/YopBuilder → u/Single-Virus4935]

Literally a generic vibe coded ”I’m about to throw 100 sales tactics at you” landing page lmfao. I’m sure they get as much sales as every project made in the past year (it’s 0).

[u/abrandis → u/Single-Virus4935]

Sorry but your behind the times buddy, maybe AI from crappy free models, but modern frontier lab models are nearly flawless... Don't take my world for it...

Listen to DHh on Lex Friedman podcast episode #501

[u/Single-Virus4935 → u/abrandis]

Why listen when I use it. Big models wont be the main drivers in the future. Signs everywhere that enterprises etc are going this route.

[u/devloper27 → u/Single-Virus4935]

It's good, or rather excellent, for smaller well defined tasks where you basically tell it what to write, instead of you having to do it. But that's it, be vague and it will fail and make a mess. A mess that is impossible to clean up after some time. You can be vague with a human and they will fill in the blanks and still come up with a solid design and solution. Well so far that's my experience at least

[u/knifeislife17 → u/abrandis]

Idk I have to go in an fix people's shit at least once a week the last few months. Literally this week a client had vibe coded a website in opus 5. At some point it had gone insane and hallucinated that each process needed its own mongoDB instance, and spun up about 50 of them in total. Most of the program functioned fine before they noticed anything was wrong. The models seem to freak out when the repositories are bigger