5 ms·

How do you define "bad code"? If I instruct the AI to make small modules where I can verify they work, have tests and no side effects - then it is good enough

by lukan 6mo ago

How do you define "bad code"? If I instruct the AI to make small modules where I can verify they work, have tests and no side effects - then it is good enough code for me. It works, is readable and can be extended - and will turn into bad code if this is not done with care.

throwaway173738 6mo ago
The concept of a small module is an architecture invariant. You’re making that decision, not the LLM. And you’ve made that decision because the machine is not good at certain things. You’re doing that because you can’t trust the LLM to make that decision on its own.
- ChicagoDave 6mo ago
  I’m doing it because as a DDD adherent, I’ve been building software that way for 15 years without GenAI and now with GenAI I can do it faster. You can’t play whack-a-mole with GenAI. You have to start from well-known principles and watch everything it produces. Every module or bounded context has to have its own invariants. You can’t fully automate software engineering with GenAI. It seems the vast majority of GenAI users think they can and end up in the same place as the OP. Maybe learn Domain-Driven Design, Event Sourcing, and then try again. The results will be dramatically improved. https://devarch.ai/ https://devarch.ai/
  - dominotw 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - gabrielhidasy 6mo ago
      That's not the point, the point is they can generate pretty good code, and do that most of the time, so ask them to generate the code, review it as you would review a more junior teammate or an opensource collaboration from an unknown source, and take advantage of their speed to test everything. You can't make a great vibe-coded thing that you couldn't make yourself, but you can get pretty much the same code you would have made in a fraction of the time.
    - ChicagoDave 6mo ago
      I have not discovered anything new. I have applied established architecture and engineering practices that I've been following for 15 years to using Claude Code. Domain-Driven Design started with Eric Evan's "blue book" in 2003 and continued with Vaughn Vernon's "red book" a few years later. Event Storming workshops and event sourcing data storage have also emerged as important tools. I am just a practitioner. Eric, Vaughn, Paul Reyner, Alberto Brandolini, and a few other architects lead. My DevArch guardrails is a toolkit to follow these practices.
      - ChicagoDave 6mo ago
        I encourage skeptics to look at the Sharpee repo at https://github.com/chicagodave/sharpee https://github.com/chicagodave/sharpee and specifically docs/context. Every session summary is there going back months.
  - peterbell_nyc 6mo ago
    Love the DDD callout. I have explicit steps to review and rate delta's to the ubiquitous language and one of my architectural reviewers will often engage with me about where the bounded contexts should be and will probably the translation layers. I find the more good practices I add to my envision/scope/spec/build/test/deploy loops the happier I am with the outcomes. I will say that I am finding the actual code to be somewhat ephemeral for me - the more precise the specifications are and generally the tighter and more elegant the design is, the less the code matters as a long term artifact. I'm not at the "code is assembler" point yet - but I could see that with more, richer specs I could end up there. Of course the specs are then substantial, but declarative specs can be robust and unambigous (with sufficient read teaming review) and - like domain specific languages - reduce the accidental complexity of the syntax when compared to an implementation in a given language. There are exceptions to all of this, but it's fascinating to see how it's evolving!
pron 6mo ago
Sure, if you carefully review the agent's output, including tests, you can get good results. If you don't carefully review the output, you obviously have no idea if it's good enough for you. The only way to find out is that 30 changes down the line the agent won't be able to change one thing without breaking another, but by then the codebase will be too far gone to fix.
- readitalready 6mo ago
  I let agents break things 30 changes down the line. If something breaks, I add a check to my project validator and start over, with the validator providing instructions on what was wrong and how to fix it. It's all automatic, and now I have a guard against the exact same error in the future. Some of these checks have caught thousands of the same error, even with the latest Opus 4.7 writing the original code.
  - hunterpayne 6mo ago
    You proved that testing is a good idea, not that vibe coding is a good idea.
    - lukan 6mo ago
      To be honest, I am past the point of wanting to convince people that AI is useful, if you want to refuse new tools other people find helpful, your loss. (Also I stick to the original definition of "vibe coding = not looking at generated code", "LLM assisted coding = verify generated code", I do both, depending on the task)
      - LtWorf 6mo ago
        So basically your only test is "it compiles" since you have no idea what it's actually testing.
        deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
WalterBright 6mo ago
> How do you define "bad code"? The harder the code is to understand, the badder it is (and the more likely it is infested with bugs).
pron 6mo ago
> How do you define "bad code"? Code that will not be able to evolve for more than one-two years is terrible code. Agents write terrible code while doing a truly impressive job hiding it (including in the tests they write) unless, of course, you keep them under very close supervision.

by lukan 6mo ago

throwaway173738 6mo ago

The concept of a small module is an architecture invariant. You’re making that decision, not the LLM. And you’ve made that decision because the machine is not good at certain things. You’re doing that because you can’t trust the LLM to make that decision on its own.

ChicagoDave 6mo ago
I’m doing it because as a DDD adherent, I’ve been building software that way for 15 years without GenAI and now with GenAI I can do it faster. You can’t play whack-a-mole with GenAI. You have to start from well-known principles and watch everything it produces. Every module or bounded context has to have its own invariants. You can’t fully automate software engineering with GenAI. It seems the vast majority of GenAI users think they can and end up in the same place as the OP. Maybe learn Domain-Driven Design, Event Sourcing, and then try again. The results will be dramatically improved. https://devarch.ai/ https://devarch.ai/
- dominotw 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - gabrielhidasy 6mo ago
    That's not the point, the point is they can generate pretty good code, and do that most of the time, so ask them to generate the code, review it as you would review a more junior teammate or an opensource collaboration from an unknown source, and take advantage of their speed to test everything. You can't make a great vibe-coded thing that you couldn't make yourself, but you can get pretty much the same code you would have made in a fraction of the time.
  - ChicagoDave 6mo ago
    I have not discovered anything new. I have applied established architecture and engineering practices that I've been following for 15 years to using Claude Code. Domain-Driven Design started with Eric Evan's "blue book" in 2003 and continued with Vaughn Vernon's "red book" a few years later. Event Storming workshops and event sourcing data storage have also emerged as important tools. I am just a practitioner. Eric, Vaughn, Paul Reyner, Alberto Brandolini, and a few other architects lead. My DevArch guardrails is a toolkit to follow these practices.
    - ChicagoDave 6mo ago
      I encourage skeptics to look at the Sharpee repo at https://github.com/chicagodave/sharpee https://github.com/chicagodave/sharpee and specifically docs/context. Every session summary is there going back months.
- peterbell_nyc 6mo ago
  Love the DDD callout. I have explicit steps to review and rate delta's to the ubiquitous language and one of my architectural reviewers will often engage with me about where the bounded contexts should be and will probably the translation layers. I find the more good practices I add to my envision/scope/spec/build/test/deploy loops the happier I am with the outcomes. I will say that I am finding the actual code to be somewhat ephemeral for me - the more precise the specifications are and generally the tighter and more elegant the design is, the less the code matters as a long term artifact. I'm not at the "code is assembler" point yet - but I could see that with more, richer specs I could end up there. Of course the specs are then substantial, but declarative specs can be robust and unambigous (with sufficient read teaming review) and - like domain specific languages - reduce the accidental complexity of the syntax when compared to an implementation in a given language. There are exceptions to all of this, but it's fascinating to see how it's evolving!

pron 6mo ago

Sure, if you carefully review the agent's output, including tests, you can get good results. If you don't carefully review the output, you obviously have no idea if it's good enough for you. The only way to find out is that 30 changes down the line the agent won't be able to change one thing without breaking another, but by then the codebase will be too far gone to fix.

readitalready 6mo ago
I let agents break things 30 changes down the line. If something breaks, I add a check to my project validator and start over, with the validator providing instructions on what was wrong and how to fix it. It's all automatic, and now I have a guard against the exact same error in the future. Some of these checks have caught thousands of the same error, even with the latest Opus 4.7 writing the original code.
- hunterpayne 6mo ago
  You proved that testing is a good idea, not that vibe coding is a good idea.
  - lukan 6mo ago
    To be honest, I am past the point of wanting to convince people that AI is useful, if you want to refuse new tools other people find helpful, your loss. (Also I stick to the original definition of "vibe coding = not looking at generated code", "LLM assisted coding = verify generated code", I do both, depending on the task)
    - LtWorf 6mo ago
      So basically your only test is "it compiles" since you have no idea what it's actually testing.
      - deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]

WalterBright 6mo ago

> How do you define "bad code"? The harder the code is to understand, the badder it is (and the more likely it is infested with bugs).

pron 6mo ago

> How do you define "bad code"? Code that will not be able to evolve for more than one-two years is terrible code. Agents write terrible code while doing a truly impressive job hiding it (including in the tests they write) unless, of course, you keep them under very close supervision.