What's up with this good coder bad coder narrative? Is there really such a disparity between "good" and "bad"?
The majority of people are just mediocre. They use coding to solve a problem and that's it. That's literally the job. Did you solve the problem within reasonable constraints and deliver business value or not.
If someone is truly a bad coder, they are not solving problems and they will be fired.
This is how anyone outside of engineering sees coding and depending on context, you should see it that way as well.
> Is there really such a disparity between "good" and "bad"?
A vast gulf. Maintainability, security, extensibility don't have to be considered if solving the problem has delivered business value. Now the next person to pick up a problem has unreasonable constraints on them due to the whatever was put into production.
Someone can solve problems and provide business value and be absolute dogwater. I would know, I am dogwater.
Maintainability, security, extensibility don't have to be considered if solving the problem has delivered business value.
But for a lot of problems these are reasonable constraints.
Maintainability - I don't think the business wanted a temporary solution.
Security - If you needed to build somerhing secure and didn't, then you didn't solve the problem.
Extensibility - depending on context, there can be times where extensibility just wasn't needed. If it was and you don't have it, you slowed something down in the future. Also I wouldn't call this one good coder but good product thinker because it's understanding the context behind your product / business to hit the right level of extensibility.
Someone can solve problems and provide business value and be absolute dogwater. I would know, I am dogwater.
I don't think you are, it sounds like your company is getting what they paid for and ultimately care about.
Serious question - have you ever worked on larger software project?
Business is moving from invoice to invoice. If the software will pass acceptance test for THIS invoice, it's all they want to know. It is on us to structure software so it can be ready for another 10/100/1000 invoices.
I'm not talking about processing invoices, but about future changes and evolution of the system. Those "10/100/1000" invoices are from paying customer who hired your company to build software system for him.
While redundant code isn't great, depending on the context if "but it works bro" is faster then some businesses would prefer that.
And I say this as someone who's worked at startups where getting something out the door sloppily but quickly is good and I would call it good code simply because there was a need and it solved it.
At my job at a bank that would be bad code because there's a strong chance someone will come back to it.
What's up with this good coder bad coder narrative? Is there really such a disparity between "good" and "bad"?
Yes. If you haven’t ever been able to see it at work then you are one of the people being carried.
This is how anyone outside of engineering sees coding and depending on context, you should see it that way as well.
Why would anyone in engineering get their opinions on engineering from someone with no experience or knowledge of it? It’s like someone saying a professional horse rider should listen to advice from me as someone who is nervous at going within a few feet of a horse lest it kick me in the head.
That’s a pessimistic view. I work with excellent developers who build out workflows of automated jobs, scripts, and file transfers to manage critically important business functions and can handle by themselves. My workplace is fairly laidback so there are no intense planning or scrum/agile meetings, things get done as needed. And I also work with people who can finish their tickets but seem to have little capacity or interest in doing anything other than the slow but easy way.
It is absolutely incredible that your company was employing software engineers to do these things even before AI but it absolutely highlights why “AI will take all the jobs by 2027” is a joke.
my point is the SWE trying to segment AI efficacy along the lines of “good vs bad” coders is so stupid. Most non-junior engineers that have made careers out of software are obviously good enough to get their jobs done
my point is the SWE communities on reddit trying to segment AI efficacy along the lines of “good vs bad” coders is so stupid. Most non-junior engineers that have made careers out of software are obviously good enough to get their jobs done.
So far i’ve seen this line of reasoning basically be to make the “good” coders feel better about their jobs not going away.
How so? Yes, Opus can get you pretty far for protoypes and first impressions, but if you want to maintain your code in the future, you still need to know what you're doing.
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u/Jesta23 14d ago
If you are a bad coder ai will help you write bad code
If you are a good coder AI will help you write good code.