I feel that two things are true at the same time:

1) Something happened during 2025 that made the models (or crucially, the wrapping terminal-based apps like Claude Code or Codex) much better. I only type in the terminal anymore.

2) The quality of the code is still quite often terrible. Quadruple-nested control flow abounds. Software architecture in rather small scopes is unsound. People say AI is “good at front end” but I see the worst kind of atrocities there (a few days ago Codex 5.3 tried to inject a massive HTML element with a CSS before hack, rather than proprerly refactoring markup)

Two forces feel true simultaneously but in permanent tension. I still cannot make out my mind and see the synthesis in the dialectic, where this is truly going, if we’re meaningfully moving forward or mostly moving in circles.

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an hour ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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orwin 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> People say AI is “good at front end”

I only say that because I'm a shit frontend dev. Honestly, I'm not that bad anymore, but I'm still shit, and the AI will probably generate better code than I will.

	▲	jygg4 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As long as humans are needed to review code, it sounds your role evolves toward prompting and reviewing. Which is akin to driving a car - the motor vehicle itself doesn’t know where to go. It requires you to prompt via steering and braking etc, and then to review what is happening in response. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - reviewing code ultimately matters most. As long as what is produced is more often than not correct and legible.. now this is a different issue for which there isn’t a consensus across software engineer’s.

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jygg4 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The models lose the ability to inject subtle and nuance stuff as they scale up, is what I’ve observed.