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In my career, I've had to write many code generation tools for many different reasons. Sometimes it's expanding C# generic boilerplate to cover between 1 and N
by estimator7292 7mo ago
In my career, I've had to write many code generation tools for many different reasons. Sometimes it's expanding C# generic boilerplate to cover between 1 and N generic parameters. Sometimes I'm porting code between languages. Sometimes it's a loop unroller or something more esoteric.
If I had to describe the way I feel about these tools, well, I don't. They're tools. They exist, briefly, to perform a function and then ascend to whatever plane lost and forgotten programs go to when they leave your hard drive.
I feel exactly the same way about AI agents. It's a tool. I put text in, computering happens, and code comes out. The amount of effort and complexity involved is different, but fundamentally I view it as the same boring codegen we've been doing for decades.
I highly suspect that because I treat AI agents this way, I get actually good, well-engineered results. I've seen extremely low rates of bad code, inappropriate solutions, or the general slop we see in vibecoded projects. I put in a great deal of engineering effort up front, and I get engineering out.
That some people find this loop addictive is... incredibly disturbing. I only foresee very bad things coming from this.
- gchamonlive 7mo agoSo you can only get good results if you engage with agents with apathy and skepticism? Can't you enjoy the dev loop and also care about code quality you submit upstream? My coding refinement sessions with codex has been just as much interesting as the implementation sessions. I get to go over the code with the agent, learn a lot of interesting techniques along the way, and we end up with nice tame code.