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.
I agree that "maintainability" is the wrong place to stake one's flag. It's a technical problem and will probably be overcome.
The "lack of wisdom" in AI coded projects which does not strike me as a soluble technical problem concerns questions like: which software is worth writing and which isn't? How are tradeoffs evaluated?
I don't think AIs are structurally capable of answering these questions in the same way humans are. But they make those decisions anyway!
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.
EarthBlues · · focus · HN ↗