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

	▲	otabdeveloper4 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> can find and report on some very sophisticated security issues sometimes Fixed it for you.