If you don't look at the code, how do you know it's higher quality than ever?

I simply test the final result,manual tests, automated tests, benchmarks, people using the apps and giving feedback, increased number of sales, etc.

Also to make it clear, I am not saying the code itself is better, but the end-product and what the user sees and gets. Like that saying "if it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid"

Because the exact same processes that create it faster, are also now generating large comprehensive test suites, and data-validation suites based around the actual business requirements and data/edge cases.

In essence, it is writing the code faster (great), but then also writing the code that was often previously never written due to budget/time limitations (comprehensive testing/validation).

So, how do you know the code is the highest quality ever? Because we have test result data that PROVES it to be the case. It isn't "trust but verify" it is "Don't trust. Verify."

Very little code written in the world day to day ever has to justify its 'quality' or long term value. A lot it is just one off tools, bits and bobs to make a teams life easier or whatever.

I used to work in Web agency for sizeable brands and not a single site I built lasted over a year because the companies changed concept regularly. The next agency would come in and tell them it was built wrong and couldn't be reused etc etc. We did the same, it was irrelevant how it was built and we didn't even look. This is the nature of most code. The problem is that very few people will ever be in a position to be writing verifiable important code, but every developer likes to cosplay that they are.

Most code is ultimately an, annoyance businesses need to meet a goal that will always be a cost. It's often worth treating it as such and writing things that are easy to spin up and teardown.

The people most vexed by AI dev appear to be the ones who think writing code is a pinnacle role, it's not even though over our lives the salaries would sometime suggest otherwise. That's ultimately going to be a short term blip in the landscape and most code will be one seen as the cost it is.

A programmer's output was never code. It's was just what we had to do to get computers to work for us. Now I just ask a genie to do what I did and check the results.

How do you know it's high quality if you do look at the code?

Competitive programmers don't usually produce quality code, I'm guessing it could hardly be worse even without looking at it.

He must have been a really bad coder.

Claude told him so.