There's a continuum between "vibe coded by someone with no technical knowledge or inclination" and "hand written domain driven design development". You can absolutely use coding agents AND have maintainable code. But yes, the coding agents will not magically make everything maintainable if you don't tell them to.
"Code maintainability and good architecture don’t have good measurements that we can apply"
Who has no wisdom? There are dozens of ways to measure code maintainability. Cyclomatic complexity is just one.
Nothing stops you from wiring up something like SonarQube metrics to your agentic coding workflow.
The comment you replied to did not say anything about unit tests. And "software quality" is much broader than "data structure and code complexity".
I do think this gets to the heart of the matter. I think many programmers have missed the forest for the trees on why things like data structure and code complexity matter. They do matter, but they don't matter in and of themselves. They matter because they are the best techniques we have for making software that is of high quality (the software, that is, not the code) and which remains so over time, while continuing to be developed and adapted.
I strongly believe that it is now much easier to create software that is of high quality and adaptability, orthogonally to the data structure and code complexity concerns. Those concerns remain relevant, but it's a mistake to think of them as the primary thing rather than things that support the primary thing
davedx · · focus · HN ↗
"Code maintainability and good architecture don’t have good measurements that we can apply"
Who has no wisdom? There are dozens of ways to measure code maintainability. Cyclomatic complexity is just one.
Nothing stops you from wiring up something like SonarQube metrics to your agentic coding workflow.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
danielbarla · · focus · HN ↗
I for one, have far more rigorous quality checks in my hobby projects (where AI coded), than I ever could justify when I hand-coded them.
I'm not claiming to be everybody, but surely a good portion of the population are using these technologies similarly.
orwin · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
I do think this gets to the heart of the matter. I think many programmers have missed the forest for the trees on why things like data structure and code complexity matter. They do matter, but they don't matter in and of themselves. They matter because they are the best techniques we have for making software that is of high quality (the software, that is, not the code) and which remains so over time, while continuing to be developed and adapted.
I strongly believe that it is now much easier to create software that is of high quality and adaptability, orthogonally to the data structure and code complexity concerns. Those concerns remain relevant, but it's a mistake to think of them as the primary thing rather than things that support the primary thing