Imagine a junior engineer in the same position: they write shallow tests, they write overly complex code.

What do you do? You provide guidance, support and tooling so they can write better tests and code. You supervise and help them meet the standard. It is the same with AI agents (including the challenge of how to carry that knowledge around and transfer it). You are responsible.

You are also responsible for the understanding part: know what is being worked on, glance at changes, inspect the outcomes, cross-check specifications, tests, product requirements. The 'moving too quickly' idea is the other side of the same coin; it is your responsibility to keep track of things and decide what's worth intervention. The exact same thing happens in a project where you have ten developers (or 200) working together — you cannot possibly read all of the code they write.

Seeing all of these as downsides is a choice.

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cassianoleal 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I guide a junior engineer, I'm helping a human being become a better version of him/herself, who also helps me grow as a human being and will contribute with their unique ideas and world view, to the team, the organisation, the industry and society.

When I do the same with an LLM, I'm just repeating the same guidance over and over again out of frustration just to get something done.

Comparing an LLM to a junior engineer is frankly a disgrace.

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ernst_klim 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You provide guidance

For that you need to actually read the code and it's somehow in odds with the whole vibecode idea.

Plus it won't give you the 10x boost the management expects. Only not looking at the code will.

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ricardobeat 11 hours ago | parent [-]

How do you suppose project leads, principal engineers, EMs provide guidance? You don’t have to read the code being written by entire teams/departments for that.

	▲	ernst_klim 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They don't. They manage highly autonomous very well educated senior engineers, who can do the work autonomously. LLMs can't, they are closer to interns with dementia (and occasional genious revelations).

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majorbugger 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And you end up rewriting this stuff yourself.

	▲	ako 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you are a bad senior, yes. If you are a good senior you train the junior so his output will improve and you train the agent so its output will improve.

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gonzalohm 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So what's the point of the tool then? So much for saving time, if I have to mentor it like a junior I much rather have a person to mentor

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hhjinks 12 hours ago | parent [-]

That was how I understood "code was never the bottleneck". If I need a deep understanding of the code, I might as well write it myself. It won't increase the time I need for the task appreciably.

	▲	gonzalohm 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly, same thing with considering AI a higher level language. If I have to think of all the corner cases and design choices in plain English, then I much rather use a programming language whose main purpose is exactly to define cases and behavior of your design