Thread

1. zug_zug · 1789908167 · focus · HN ↗

   I think this is a bit of a simplistic mental approach. I've certainly seen a lot of "The engineer owns the outcome, AI is just a tool, don't release anything you don't vouch for."

   However, I just don't think that's realistic. It's asking an author to suddenly become an editor. It's asking somebody who writes code to now read and debug others code.

   It can actually be harder to find the the bug in a tricky piece of code than it can be to write your own correct code from scratch. I see AI introduce all sorts of bugs all the time in my personal projects that I would never introduce, and would never think to test for, especially around anything graphical.

   1. christophilus · 1789908765 · focus · HN ↗

      > It's asking somebody who writes code to now read and debug others code.

      This has been a big part of the job for anyone on a team for at least 20 years. I do agree that it’s the hardest and worst part of the job, and has now become the majority of the job for anyone who isn’t vibe coding. So, that sucks.

      1. OptionOfT · 1789919170 · focus · HN ↗

         Disagree. At least back in the day there weren't endless comments about how this widget is load-bearing, and how honestly the other widget carries the derived widget, referencing decision ADR-100 that is nowhere to be found. All these comments matter because once accepted as part of the codebase the next LLM takes these comments as canonical.

         The largest problem these days is the volume of code developers are expected to review. The volume went up significantly.

         1. Daishiman · 1789961337 · focus · HN ↗

            > At least back in the day there weren't endless comments about how this widget is load-bearing

            By far the biggest problem 90% of developers have with AI is that they should be turning off comments, as it's clear that the training data they have is no good for developing a theory of mind for an engineer who has to read them.

            I've turned them off and add them myself at review time and am quite happy.

            1. zahlman · 1789984218 · focus · HN ↗

               Requiring the coding agent to (try to) iterate on code clarity until comments are no longer necessary, probably doesn't hurt either. Save the commentary for conversation logs, agent Markdown files, and other sorts of documentation.

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