I think their major issue is actually naming. I don't think they have issues making well factored code because you can tell them how to factor it. You can even tell them how to name it. But that takes time. People want the functionality now without having to wait. So the well factored and well named stuff is a functoin of how much time you want to spend giving overview. I don't think you're going to have many cases where its faster to type each thing yourself. You can describe the details in a prompt which can be referenced as you review.

The issue is nobody is spending time in review because the stuff coming out "just works". So if no one is reading the code, what is the big deal with naming? The big deal is we need to know what our later sessions are talking about and we need linguistic separation of concerns.

A higher level form of programming, if you will. Linguistic precision seems to be where the specificity can be lost or won. The naming will reflect that with some degradation. But humans will also degrade the spirit of the specifications as well in many cases!

Hopefully this post makes some sense to someone.

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zahlman 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The issue is nobody is spending time in review because the stuff coming out "just works".

People used to be able to write code that was horrible by all the standard metrics but still "just worked" (or at least appeared to). From the stories I've heard, it would get into production all the time, too. But if it's a bigger problem now, then necessarily we know how to fix it, so.

I guess the excitement of the new toy is just leading to some irresponsibility.

	▲	weirdhacker42 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don‘t know that we know how to fix it so well after the fact, but rather we know how to avoid it which is by writing understandable code the first time round. But we don’t always do that and then things get rewritten and broken etc Welcome to life in software dev 2026, not so different from 1996

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bagacrap 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don't think they have issues making well factored code because you can tell them how to factor it

I mean, who's doing the factoring then?

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weirdhacker42 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Great point and I think it highlights the issue with talking about this topic because the terminology is so black and white, "AI made it" or "I made it". But the truth is more like I got on a bicycle that I did not build and rode a marathon through treacherous land that I have not been through before, but I have been through other treacherous land before and I had some scar tissue that helped me through this time. Jobs was on the money when he referred to the computer as being like a bicycle. ("for the mind" ... to finish the quote)

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bagacrap 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, I think of a computer as a bicycle and AI as a motorcycle. It will definitely get you there faster, but is it better for you?

Also "great point" is sadly a phrase that has been co opted by sycophantic AI so I can no longer take it seriously.

	▲	weirdhacker42 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Well I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t see “great point” used often but in terms of its agreeableness I can see how one could take it that way. (In fact I had a feeling someone would say that, but it was a concise wording for what I intended so I left it in). I see it as a multiplier (the bicycle metaphor) and yes certainly getting across town on a bicycle or across the country on a plane is less cumbersome on your health than walking every where. I don’t ride motorcycles, I rode a scooter for a long time doing a delivery job as a younger man and the speed and instability (of two wheeled motorized vehicles) along with lack of visibility to others creates a dangerous combination. And yes I can see the corollaries there to AI usage especially in these days when the excitement of the acceleration is being found seductive by many and without much visibility into the longer term consequences.