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0 points20k20d ago0 comments

And now you have no idea how any of the code works

AI writes bad software by virtue of it being written by the AI, not you. No actual team member understands what's going on with the code. You can't interrogate the AI for its decision making. It doesn't understand the architecture its built. There's nobody you can ask about why anything is built the way it is - it just exists

Its interesting watching people forget that the #1 most important thing is developers who understand a codebase thoroughly. Institutional knowledge is absolutely key to maintaining a codebase, and making good decisions in the long term

Its always been possible to trade long term productivity for short term gains like this. But now you simply have no idea what's going on in your code, which is an absolute nightmare for long term productivity

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hombre_fatal19d ago

You can read as much or as little of the code as you want.

The status quo was that I have no better understanding of code I haven't touched in a year, or code built by other people. Now I have the option to query the code with AI to bootstrap my understanding to exactly the level necessary.

But you're wrong on every claim about LLM capabilities. You can ask the AI exactly why it decided on a given design. You can ask it what the best options were and why it chose that option. You can ask it for the trade-offs.

In fact, this should be part of your Plan feedback loop before you move to Implementation.

20kOP19d ago

You can ask the AI why, but its answer doesn't come from any kind of genuine reasoning. It doesn't know why it did anything, because it doesn't exist as a sentient being. It just makes something up that sounds good

If you choose to take AI reasoning at face value, you're choosing to accept pretty strong technical debt

mirsadm20d ago

My own observation is that the initial boost to productivity results in massive crippling technical debt.

davidvartanian17d ago

That's just because everyone is misusing AI. If you ask AI to do a job and you have no idea what it did, you lost ownership, which means you're asking to be replaced. You need to own the task. If you fully delegate your task to anyone else or to AI, you no longer know what's going on. AI does not necessarily produce more tech debt, but AI might do things you don't expect because it lacks context and specificity to perform accurately.

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