| ▲ | leduyquang753 3 hours ago |
| > Many software developers have argued that working like a pack of hyenas and shipping hundreds of commits a day without reading your code is an unsustainable way to build valuable software, but this leak suggests that maybe this isn’t true — bad code can build well-regarded products. The product hasn't been around long enough to decide whether such an approach is "sustainable". It is currently in a hype state and needs more time for that hype to die down and the true value to show up, as well as to see whether it becomes the 9th circle of hell to keep in working order. |
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| ▲ | jona777than 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| I have flip-flopped more than ever in the last 365 days about prioritizing good code vs good product, in the AI age. This helps clarifies why. I have come to the conclusion that we just do not know yet. There is a part of me that believes there is a point somewhere on the grand scale where the code quality genuinely does not matter if the outcome is reliably and deterministically achieved. (As an image, I like to think of Wall—E literally compressing garbage into a cube shape.) This would ignore maintenance costs (time and effort inclusive.) Those matter to an established user base (people do not love change in my experience, even if it solves the problem better.) On the other hand, maybe software is meant to be highly personal and not widely general. For instance, I have had more fun in the past two years than the entire 15 years of coding before it, simply building small custom-fitted tools for exactly what I need. I aimed to please an audience of one. I have also done this for others. Code quality has not mattered all that much, if at all. It will be interesting to see where things go. |
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| ▲ | otabdeveloper4 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > if the outcome is reliably and deterministically achieved It's not. My favorite example: due to vibe coding overload literally nobody knows what configuration options OpenClaw now supports. (Not even other LLM's.) Their "solution" is to build a chat bot LLM that will attempt to configure OpenClaw for you, and hope for the best, fingers crossed. Yes, really. |
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| ▲ | mergesort 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Hey there, author of the post here. I actually agree with this! That is in fact why I used the word maybe — my comment really was meant to be more speculative than definitive. |
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| ▲ | 59nadir 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think one thing that goes unmentioned is that maybe code quality is really not that important for trivial things, because they can be trivially reproduced if need be. I would argue Claude Code is exactly such a project; coding agents are incredibly simple and rewriting CC wouldn't be much of a problem. Non-trivial things tend to be much more sensitive to code quality in my experience, and will by necessity be kept around for longer and thus be much more sensitive to maintenance issues. | | |
| ▲ | rakel_rakel an hour ago | parent [-] | | > maybe code quality is really not that important for trivial things I hear this narrative being pushed quite a bit, and it makes my spidey senses tingle every time.
Secure programs are a subset of correct programs, and to write and maintain correct programs you need to have a quality mindset. A 0-day doesn't care if it's in a part of your computer you consider trivial or not. | | |
| ▲ | 59nadir an hour ago | parent [-] | | Intrinsically simple and straight forward problems are easier to secure even with mediocre or bad code. They've already shown that Opus 4.6 can find and report on very sophisticated security issues[0] so I'm not sure that analysis (and perhaps especially security analysis) is the biggest issue with LLMs. Mind you, I'm not using LLMs for professional programming since I prefer knowing everything inside and out in the code that I work on, but I have tried a bunch of different modes of use (spec-driven + entire implementation by Opus 4.6, latest Codex and Composer 2, and entirely "vibecoded", as well as minor changes) and can say that for trivial in-house things it's actually usable. Do I prefer to rewrite it entirely manually if I want something that I actually like? Yes. Do I think that not everything needs to be treated that way if you just want an initial version you can tinker with? Also yes. 0: https://youtu.be/1sd26pWhfmg | | |
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