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It’s really good at writing bad code - something that superficially works but is badly architected, abstracted, or wrong in a subtle way. Only a novice would l
by loloquwowndueo 2mo ago
It’s really good at writing bad code - something that superficially works but is badly architected, abstracted, or wrong in a subtle way.
Only a novice would look at ai code and say “wow this is good”.
- bashwizard 2mo agoSkill issue. No pun intended.
- rnd33 2mo agoFor well-scoped tasks I wouldn't say the code is bad, not brilliant for sure, but definitively good enough. For a lot of problems "quick and good enough" is all that is required. I've used it a lot for managing my Home Assistant setup. Has saved me countless of hours. In principle I could've done it myself, but I never would have, the time investment required to learn it wouldn't have been worth the value I get from it.
- sneak 2mo agoI’ve been programming professionally for 29 years and with the right constraints (strongly typed language, strict linting, adversarial review styleguide, test coverage, clearly defined spec or requirements) it does indeed regularly write good code. All of the other stuff required is either set-once-and-forget or is also AI, and it does require supervision, but it writes good code the vast majority of the time. Note that I am talking about frontier models and only the last 6-12 months. Opus was really the breakthrough point for me.
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoI’ve been programming professionally for 31 years. With all those guardrails it writes functional code - but I would still not call it good. But hey to each their own.
- ff317 2mo agoI think of the distinction here is about the domains we're coding within. If your software projects are product-y CRUD apps/sites... well, LLMs will tend to perform decently at that, because it's fundamentally pretty trivial work anyways, and there are so many examples to draw from. All CRUD apps are essentially isomorphic, with just some rules to plug in about data validation, business logic, etc. On the other hand, if your software projects involve more-difficult subject matter, you're going to find it struggles a lot more.
- olmo23 2mo agoYou don't have to let it design the architecture. Personally, when I'm using AI: I design the software, and the AI implements it. The classes and functions are typed the way I want them to be typed. AI does a great job.
- carlosjobim 2mo agoSomething is better than nothing. A pain plate of rice is bad food. But would you prefer starving too death? Or for others to starve?
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoAI is like eating cardboard.
- carlosjobim 2mo agoAI can make fully functioning computing solutions. That's just a fact and denying it is like denying that a bicycle can roll and only four wheeled vehicles can. Or saying that a car is a better vehicle than a bicycle. That is probably true, but many times for many people a bicycle is all they can get.
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoGlad you went for this analogy. It’s like an AI producing a board with a beach umbrella nailed on it and four wheels, and saying “meh it’s good enough for transportation, human car designers are doomed”. It’s functional, right?
- carlosjobim 2mo agoIf that's your conception of a bicycle.
- inigyou 2mo agoYeah. You ask for a bicycle and you get a cardboard box with 4 wheels stuck to it.
- seamlessdev 2mo agoYeah if you just let it run wild, it will produce subpar results. But that is not much different from humans tbh. When you discuss design and architecture first, and write that out in a design doc or something along those lines, it works quite well for the most part. And 9 out of 10 times when it produces some poor results, just asking "is this really a good approach?" or just stating "This code makes me very sad" it will most of the time do a really good job of analysing why that code is bad and how to improve it.
- loloquwowndueo 2mo agoAnalyzing? No. It’s just being sycophantic. Try it on code that’s actually correct - it’ll go all “oh you’re absolutely right” and wreck it anyway.
- seamlessdev 2mo agoI was talking about style and architecture. In all these cases the code is working as intended either way. There is no such thing as "correct" style and architecture. There are only tradeoffs. You should know that if you have 31 years of experience.
- loloquwowndueo 2mo ago> There is no such thing as "correct" style and architecture. You should know that if you have 31 years of experience. And you should know that this is not accurate. But at this point this has devolved into a dick measuring contest, which I refuse to do. Have a good day.
- post-it 2mo agoThe point of good architecture is that when your requirements change, it's easy to change your code to accommodate them. But with AI, it's always easy to change your code to accommodate changing requirements. So the impact of bad architecture is low and you can focus on solving today's problems instead of tomorrow's problems.