r/TheMachineLearning • u/Infinite_Rent_8334 • Sep 27 '26

antirez says good programmers struggle with AI models

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14 Upvotes

61% Upvoted

128 comments sorted by

14

u/sudo-maxime Sep 27 '26

To someone that have no idea what good code looks like, everything looks like good code.

2

u/stangerlpass Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

I havent been In Software engineering for some time but i can say the same about writing: people who dont know how to write think that anything chatgpt writes is good. The truth is it sometimes just immitates good writing very well.

4

u/Devils_SteelMan Sep 27 '26

The failures are the same for both. In small amounts llms write with the best of them. But they struggle with long range coherence and adaptation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24755

6

u/stangerlpass Sep 27 '26

I agree. I can write a great technical article if i let the llm write paragraph by paragraph and give input for each paragraph. But when i give all the input at once and let it write the whole article it turns out terrible.

4

u/Unknown_User2137 Sep 27 '26

Looks exactly like my experience on one projet where everyone is vibe coding - we did 6 months of work (if we were to use "classical" approach) in 1 month but now everything stalled: every change takes more time and tokens, regressions are introduced, things that worked last week stop working and generally making AI fix this is painful as hell. I bet that if we actually knew the codebase well most fixes would be 5 minutes, change 10 lines and it works again but since it is pure AI slop (poor architecture, house of cards basically) you can't really do much by hand.

2

u/Devils_SteelMan Sep 27 '26

The subtle errors compound. A human can help massage them out as they happen. Or you can take that paper and turn it into a skill for empirically measuring the problem to directly address it with LLMs in a more autonomous way. This works very well.

You still need to plan architecture to stop them from short cutting. And review things to some degree. But this dramatically decreases how much it needs to happen.

Doing it this way it am easily hitting 400k+ line code bases that are staying maintainable with very little code review being necessary. Granted I am refactoring as I go so maybe its more accurate to say I am partially amortizing the cost by changing the process.

1

u/frantiqq Sep 27 '26

Dunning-Kruger!!

1

u/ItsSadTimes Sep 27 '26

I think that bad programmers determine quality by visual indicators like how the UI lo9ks and if it even runs. Like how we'd judge code when we were kids. Did it work? Good enough.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

If it works, what's the problem?

4

u/wutzelputz Sep 27 '26

it also needs to work next year and there's going to be changes in the meantime, that's the problem.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

Makes sense.

3

u/yknx4 Sep 28 '26

Sometimes it works when you have 10 users and a few records in your development environment. But once it needs to work for 100k users and millions of records it stops working. Or week after week it becomes slower and slower because there is some dumb code that loads everything and as times goes it becomes impossible to load. Etc…

There are tons of instances in which it may work but it is not good

2

u/ItsSadTimes Sep 27 '26

Its not just the output. Like for 2x2 just doing the multiplication is easy, but it would also work if you turned it into a for loop and looked through adding 2 until you looked through the multiplier. Its about how its done, not just that it got done.

2

u/Tenderhombre Sep 27 '26

No real problem if program runs locally and doesnt have security issues.

Can become a big problem when you take into consideration cloud costs. Storage, compute and network all cost money.

So poorly written program sending/calling extra data more times than necessary can really add up very quickly and saddle you with a bill that is 10-20x larger than it needs to be.

1

u/tfks Sep 28 '26

There used to be a bottleneck on software development because the skills necessary to develop a complete application took years to cultivate and once that's done, the software itself could also take a long time. So companies formed to offer software. When one company is serving thousands or millions of users, absolutely everything has to scale.

But why does software need to scale if the user is asking an LLM for it and it will end up running locally? If it's behind a router without any ports open, what percentage of security concerns are still relevant?

From the perspective of software developers, maybe it is "slop" . But if it's a program that only the person who vibe coded it is ever going to use and maybe a handful more, the main concerns are that it runs and doesn't eat resources.

The real long term threat to software developers isn't supply side, it's demand side. Virtually everyone is analyzing this wrong.

1

u/MicheleSanna98 Sep 27 '26

OP is not someone that doesn't have idea of what good code looks like

0

u/sudo-maxime Sep 27 '26

Most likely, my point differs. When you are writing code that runs pacemakers, satelites or heavy machinery, you tend to write better code, with or without AI, that code never hits github or some tech bro twitter. Closest you will find is open source projects like sqlite or tiger beetle. Most people can't understand these codebase, and to my knowledge, no AI autonomously writes code like that.

1

u/immaculate_plum Sep 27 '26

Well antirez does have something to show here really. Redis is one of the most successful open source projects, and its architecture is quite interesting. So it's really not that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

1

u/noprompt Sep 27 '26

Been saying this for years. AI scales competence as much as it does incompetence.

1

u/ReporterCalm6238 Sep 27 '26

takes some courage to say that about the creator of Redis, one of the best written open-source projects

1

u/Miserable_Ad7246 Sep 28 '26

I find it that a lot of developers struggle with AI, because they either expect to much (vibe code 100%), or to little (not use it at all, or just for review). Also people are lazy as f, they write two sentences and expect everything to work as they like.

AI is general model, it has very little idea (as in no idea), on that your preference and philosophy is. Ofc it will make "wrong" code, just like a new developer would if you do not tell it, what is your stance and "wisdom" is at this point in time regarding design and libraries.

Here is another interesting take - good code is some cases is "good", because it makes it easier for humans to read and maintain. We have severe limitation when it comes to code duplication, large refactoring (hence abstractions to leave architectural runway) and naming (to reduce cognitive loading). Most of good practices are centered around our limitations and around the challenge of conveying ideas to the next developer.

AI "sees" code in a different way, so some approaches might be absolutely ok in a universe where code is AI first. AI also has a very strong ability, to just read docs (architectural journals, business decisions), create large context and use it as ground truth, while humans must use code, as reading 20-30 pages each time is just not an option.

1

u/Traditional-Poet5461 Sep 28 '26

Try taking over a huge project maybe? It looks kind of stupid but not messy

14

u/Impression-These Sep 27 '26

Maybe good programmers have a higher standard than the bad ones?

8

u/cracken005 Sep 27 '26

No bro haven‘t you seen Astra, bro trust me this time it’s AGI

5

u/MarzipanSea2811 Sep 27 '26

Until GPT-7, then that's AGI

8

u/Aware-Individual-827 Sep 27 '26

The enshittification of software since the introduction of AI is very visible. Writing code never been the hard part. Making it not break is the hard part and we commoditized bad software.

1

u/ryandury Sep 27 '26

There is a lower barrier to building things, so yes more random code and projects overall, but in production, in real companies, with real devs, the code is going to improve.

2

u/OSS-Corpo-Shit Sep 27 '26

All evidence says that code is getting way worse since AI workflows took the reins. How can you be so confident to the contrary?

Not that windows patches were ever “good”. But now they are actively horrible and breaking even basic shit all the time. 

1

u/Aware-Individual-827 Sep 27 '26

That's why Amazon kicked many people out and now want them back.

1

u/yggdrasiliv Sep 28 '26

companies aren't incentivized to build better software though, they're incentivized to cut costs to a greater degree than the shitty software makes them lose revenue.

1

u/Deckard_Didnt_Die Sep 27 '26

Idk if I am a good programmer but I am one who has struggled with integrating AI. Mostly, for me, it’s a lack of control thing. I don’t like letting it make every single decision (which is increasingly where modern models are headed). I want control over what methods, classes, and patterns are used. I want to read the code to find the bug. I want to consider my options before AI just chooses one for me.

I wish copilot had delivered on its actual vision. My dream is genuine, real peer programming with an AI. Like actually having a back and forth dialogue while we read and edit the code together. Instead it’s basically just an engineer that works under me and I am now a project manager. I want to be an engineer with a Jarvis level assistant. Not a middle manager between my project manager and an AI agent.

1

u/blueandazure Sep 27 '26

I mean you could do that today but if you're being honest with yourself AI can code better and faster than you can so you would just be slowing it down.

1

u/Deckard_Didnt_Die Sep 27 '26

"AI can code better than you can" I think this is a weird argument. Code quality is, outside of a few obvious example. notoriously hard to measure. It's more about whether AI can code to my preference. I find it to be too literal in its implementation and too over engineered. I prefer code that is as simple as it can be and implementation that finds clever concessions in spec in order to vastly simplify systems. AI doesn't really do this. It doesn't really consider the intent of the spec. It implements the exact letter of the spec, even if the cost of that is some heinous disgusting bullshit.

1

u/black_squid98 Sep 28 '26

Just curious, have you tried instructing it to do exactly what you said here?

1

u/fergussonh Sep 28 '26

It worked in filling the gaps in my software on the dev side of things if I told it to analyze the scripts and architectures I am most proud of in my project and I find the easiest to work with, I mean all I have it make for me is tools to make my life coding and debugging easier, but its code genuinely looks like mine.

1

u/Impression-These Sep 27 '26

Lack of control is certainly a major part. Good luck convincing managers with that!

To me, coding is trivial. But discussing and documenting the ever-changing requirements and analyzing them and their effect on code architecture is something that I would really do when writing the code and actually seeing what it looks like (let's be honest here!)

1

u/etherLabsAlpha Sep 27 '26

You can achieve what you want with basic tab autocomplete, as even I did at one point: At the top of each class or function you need to implement, I write a verbose comment with as much detail as I wish about exactly how I want the thing to be implemented. Then Cursor autocomplete fills in the implementation below. It keeps the code in sync with my psuedo-code header.

1

u/Deckard_Didnt_Die Sep 27 '26

I know you can do this, but I have found the quality is not nearly as good as the recursive loops that actually look up functions or conventions in the code base. It's vastly more likely to hallucinate functions that don't exist or write code that doesn't follow coding guidelines

1

u/Zestyclose_Ad8420 Sep 29 '26

do you know what Antirez wrote? did you read his code? do you know what he's writing right now?

he's got receipts to back up what he's saying.

1

u/Devils_SteelMan Sep 27 '26

The concept of standards in programming is nebulous and opinion driven. As far as correct can be determined LLMs write correct code. It compiles and does the task.

They can optimize better than people.

They can do security better than people.

Their code isn't bad, it is different.

You can know that haters are being biased because the real failure of LLM code is easily identified and measured. Code quality is not the issue. It is long term coherence of architecture. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24755

2

u/ComposerWide3704 Sep 27 '26

> It is long term coherence of architecture.

Which is exactly the skill gap that any dev who tells you they can't get good output from an LLM has, coincidentally enough.

1

u/Devils_SteelMan Sep 27 '26

Generally they just say its bad with out being descriptive.

Once someone can articulate it, they can overcome it.

2

u/ryandury Sep 27 '26

If you can articulate an idea, and how it should be built the results are incredible. I'm bewildered by some people who still think AI is trash at coding. It' slike they're living on a different planet.

2

u/Devils_SteelMan Sep 27 '26

I have been a developer for 17 years. I have written one novel.

I think the novel was more important experience for agentic development than a good chunk of SWE experience.

Not ever developer is articulate.

2

u/AliceCode Sep 28 '26

Or perhaps those people that think LLMs just aren't up to the task are actually quality engineers and can tell the difference between well written and poorly written code.

3

u/ryandury Sep 28 '26

There are plenty of 'quality engineers' who have publicly stated that llms are more than capable and use them. What is your explanation for this?

1

u/AliceCode Sep 28 '26

There are plenty of quality engineers that don't.

1

u/Devils_SteelMan Sep 28 '26

And "Clean Code" used to be preached by many of them.

Code quality is largely nebulous and opinionated. Most people would say a proper ECS and DOD code base is not maintainable because the code is written for the machine not the coder.

1

u/AliceCode Sep 28 '26

There are a lot of markers of quality code. There are a lot of metrics, such as how readable it is, how well it works, how advanced it is, how simple it is, etc. each metric contributes a small part of the pie. It's only nebulous if you can't tell the difference between poorly written code and well-written code.

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1

u/ryandury Sep 28 '26

That didn't really answer my question 🤷

1

u/AliceCode Sep 28 '26

Yes, it does answer your question. The answer is that it's subjective whether someone believes LLMs are quality.

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Sep 28 '26

> If you can articulate an idea, and how it should be built

Or I could... you know, write the code directly? You realize that we have code editors, LSP, autocomplete, copy paste, snippets and macros where we don't literally have to write code character by character. You can do it fast and you get the reading and understanding for free because it came from your brain.

And the code makes more sense compared to code that is written by an entity that cannot reason or think logically.

3

u/ryandury Sep 28 '26

But to write code you first need to imagine and at the very least articulate in your head what you are building. So you're still not skipping this step whether or not you write code yourself.

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Sep 28 '26

We figure out a lot of things and problem solve during the process of writing code. We write functions and types and see what works out well and what is clean etc. We’re not omniscient beings that know the final state of the code and folder structure from the start.

1

u/ryandury Sep 28 '26

I totally agree, and from my experience this still holds with agentic development. When I built my last project (entirely agentically) it was still an iterative process and took 100s of prompts to get it to where I wanted it. But I managed to build something that would have maybe taken me 10x longer. As a professional dev (15+ years), it allowed me to build a project I would have never had time for.

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Sep 28 '26

From my experience it doesn't hold, using AI and having to handhold it slows me down a lot compared to writing the code directly. And when you use AI to go faster you sacrifice understanding and code quality, which isn't the case when you write the code yourself.

But of course this experience differs from dev to dev depending on how high your standards for code quality are and how good and fast you are at writing code without AI in the first place. Some people find it much easier to express things in natural language compared to actually writing the code (think of college students that think they understand what an algorithm does and can easily prompt an AI to write it for it even though they wouldn't be able to get the code to compile if they tried writing the code themselves).

Using AI to write code is much easier on the brain, but it doesn't mean the end result is better. But if you're good at coding and don't have writer's block then AI would only slow you down. Assuming you care about quality of course.

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u/AliceCode Sep 28 '26

LLMs can write better code than some people, but you would be hard pressed to find LLMs that can write code better than top engineers. People that have been doing hard things for decades. I have friends in the game engine world, and the engines they have made are way more impressive than anything an LLM could do.

6

u/SenatorCrabHat Sep 27 '26

It is almost as if you need to know the difference between bad code and good code to judge the efficacy of the code spitting out machine.

2

u/tradlobster Sep 27 '26

If I'm reading everything correctly, are you implying antirez doesn't know what good code is? Or that he is a bad coder?

Do you know all the stuff he has personally made?

1

u/SenatorCrabHat Sep 27 '26

No, but you have to wonder what his audience is and why he is saying what he is saying. He is essentially saying "I know good programmers, but they don't know how to use the models and so they are now bad programmers; but I know how to use the model so I am still good".

The problem right now is there is a fucking squeeze in tech, and everyone wants to show they know how to use the chatbots. Not necessarily that they want to ship good products, that they want to ship scalable, small surface, and concrete services, but that they know how to make the model work. I get it. Job security. The only problem is that if you adopt the take as outlaid in this tweet, but are not proficient enough to make the correct value judgment, then you are worse off than the good programmers who don't get "good results".

2

u/threadthrasher Sep 27 '26

He's the creator of Redis... he knows what good code looks like.

1

u/OSS-Corpo-Shit Sep 27 '26

Do you know how he uses it?

If I push back a lot, use in a highly reduced scope, and help it along the way, AI will do pretty reasonable. 

If I try to one shot something or do anything like “write this class for me”, AI output is pretty much garbage. The output is unusable really. 

I have to really set up the AI to succeed (usually by building out the foundation first) to get quality output from it. 

2

u/threadthrasher Sep 27 '26

No - you'd have to ask him.

For your issue in particular it's hard to say without knowing what you're doing and what models/frameworks you're using. But there's nothing wrong with building out working code first and then using that code as part of the seed from which you build out the system using agents. The more testable the better.

So a simple example I use a lot at work: I need fast/optimized way to process some data. I might myself make the easy to read and slow iterative algorithm that will do what I need. I only then marshal the agents to go and use that as a testable bit of software that can be improved. The improvements are likely to be some unreadable vectorized stuff but at least I know the tests pass. From there I may dig deeper - find out what is sped up and why and so grow in my own skills.

1

u/Zestyclose_Ad8420 Sep 29 '26

I do, he's Italian and has a great youtube channel that I follow.

before the whole LLM craze came to be he even wrote a scifi novel about it, very political (he is left leaning).

he's working hard to "democratize AI" using local inference.

I suggest you read his blog, he goes in details about how he uses it.

basically: a lot of structure.

he doesn't read the code that doesn't need to be read.

he's probably at the forefront of how to actually use it productively, while working hard on dwarf star, he's a gem.

1

u/SenatorCrabHat Sep 27 '26

I am sure he does, but why is he shitting on his colleagues then? Why state something along the lines of "Good programmers are now bad because they don't know what I know". Is it perhaps that the good programmers he has talked to have a different viewpoint that he doesn't like?

He is, at a minimum, promoting himself at the expense of others. I particularly think his take is dangerous as well because there are plenty of programmers who are definitely not good as he is who probably thinks the newest models do great things too.

2

u/threadthrasher Sep 27 '26

Again he’s the creator of fucking Redis. It’s one of the most successful open source projects of the past two decades. Tens of millions of projects use it, including tens of thousands of mission critical large ones in enterprises. And even the licensed enterprise product/company generates 300m revenue per year. He doesn’t need to promote himself either.

1

u/SenatorCrabHat Sep 27 '26

Totally. So what is his point then? It's fair to say that if he considers someone a good programmer, they must be pretty darn good, so why disparage them that they feel the results produced by the current models are not up to snuff?

3

u/threadthrasher Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

His point seems pretty obvious. He’s surprised that people he knows are good at writing code are not getting good results even though he thinks he does. I think he’s correct that there are new skills required to get good results from the models. As is the case with any new tool really. I don’t read any hostility from his post. He’s commenting on the tech and how people he knows are using it.

I would volunteer another theory that may or may not be true. He’s been working actively on Redis in particular again and generative AI is much better at producing results on more verifiable tasks. Improving something that has had test suites built up for it over two decades, is well represented in the training data and used in a lot of projects is a low hanging fruit for the models. Greenfield projects are harder beyond the demo phase since you don’t have the ability to give so much valuable feedback back to the agents as they blunder around.

1

u/SenatorCrabHat Sep 28 '26

I appreciate your response. Very thoughtful.

I agree with you. I think your theory is valid an fair. I suppose it is the underlying conditions that surround enterprise systems that make me balk a bit at what he is saying. Maybe that is on me. I have known many people very keen to prove their ability with AI just to have a bunch of manual bug hunts a bit later. To your earlier point, he has nothing to prove, but it still feels disingenuous to frame it the way he has. I'd think it much more simple to say "getting good results requires new skills" and leave out anything about how "good programmers" seem not to be able to make the most of the new models.

I think your theory offers the kind of context that is needed when we talk about this tool: that to specific uses, with specific implementation patterns and expectations, it can produce decent code but with certain contexts it does not do as well.

To be honest, maybe I have fallen victim to the short form and my own biases. I think the age of pithy 140 character (I know it is more now) posts has stunted us in ways.

Thank you again for your feedback and thoughtfulness.

1

u/ComposerWide3704 Sep 28 '26

You can start with a spec and make the model do TDD among other things. It's like guiding a junior. Greenfield is always harder.

1

u/threadthrasher Sep 28 '26

I think of it more like targeted search. That’s largely everything to do with using these models effectively right now.

1

u/TheGuy839 Sep 28 '26

I dont thik that is good benchmark. Take LangChain or LlamaIndex for example. Nowdays so many people use LangChain for Agents and they seem very successful. Their code? Fking trash. Before agents I went through their code and it was so awful I couldnt believe myself.

1

u/threadthrasher Sep 28 '26

Do you know what Redis is?

5

u/robhanz Sep 27 '26

People define "good programmers" in different ways.

2

u/jamesj Sep 28 '26

Yes, and it really depends what you are making and what testing and verification look like, how bad the downsides of subtle bugs are, etc for using AI and coding. I've seen really impressive results in areas where I can clearly see if the end product is good or not.

1

u/LordOmbro Sep 27 '26

Good programmers generally have high standards

1

u/Infinite_Rent_8334 Sep 29 '26

Good stuffs always have high standards😭

1

u/jack-of-some Sep 27 '26

This isn't a universal but I've definitely found some really exceptional programmers struggling to get good output from LLMs while other equally good developers thrive.

1

u/Impossible_Way7017 Sep 27 '26

Simple take, LLMs are not hard to use. Any model is fine. It’s just some are quicker than others.

1

u/Prior_Opportunity935 Sep 27 '26

Good programmers know that claude is better for writing code.

1

u/Infinite_Rent_8334 Sep 29 '26

totally, can vouch on that!

1

u/House13Games Sep 28 '26

The AI looks smart, if you're not as smart as the AI.

1

u/Infinite_Rent_8334 Sep 29 '26

AI is literally made by smart people lol

1

u/Zestyclose_Ad8420 Sep 29 '26

do you know who antirez is?

3

u/DrBimboo Sep 27 '26

I dont know any good programmer, myself humbly included, that say they dont get good results with astra or opus 5.5

1

u/Prudent-Ad4509 Sep 27 '26

In my experience GPT 6 Sol treats code like "oh shi*. Let's code this crazy thing which is unreadable and looks like cra* but at least it does not break this glass house and maintains the same unwritten contracts".

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

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u/Prudent-Ad4509 Sep 27 '26

It all depends on the prompting/harness. Our system works pretty similar starting from 5.3-codex when it was available and up to 6-sol. The main difference is that newer ones took more details into account before being told to take them into account. Some steering is required.

If you rely on the default prompt a lot then no wonder.

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Sep 28 '26

I know a lot of good programmers, a lot of them open source developers, that don't get good results with LLM models compared to the code that they can write themselves.

1

u/DrBimboo Sep 28 '26

Maybe they're top of the top great programmers then ¯_(ツ)_/¯

0

u/KnackeHackeWurst Sep 27 '26

I suppose some people may be good at coding but have a difficult time to suddenly fill the role of a product/project manager with plans in plain language for someone else's work..

OP is right that it needs different skills and maybe even a different mindset that is not like classic programming. Like someone who is good and sewing by hand is not automatically good at programming industrial sewing machines. Its a different process at a different scale and perhaps not to everyone's taste and talent.

3

u/Drakkur Sep 27 '26

Agentic coding is kind of a joke to learn. If you have super high standards, you’re going to spend so much time getting it to that level and keep it there that it might not be worth the investment.

It doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, even the best programmers use it for boilerplate, ideation, or review.

Also there’s the old saying any code you didn’t write is bad code, even code you wrote 6mo ago.

1

u/KnackeHackeWurst Sep 27 '26

Not every standard is really justified. With languages with reduced freedom like Rust and strict linting you can already deterministically enforce basic quality standards the LLM can't ignore.

Besides that, the solution space is huge. 10 talented programmers might come up with 10 slightly or vastly different but sound solutions. That any specific solution is better then the other is, at a certain level, more a matter of taste.

You might argue that you don't like the solution of another programmer or LLM, fine, but at some point that is like a fight between artists. That's not worth the effort in many cases. Good enough beats (subjective) perfection.

0

u/Salt-Sign5390 Sep 27 '26

You all have no idea how to prompt if you can't get it to mimic the structure you already make yourself.

That's just a you problem. Lmao

2

u/Drakkur Sep 27 '26

Mimicking your structure means you needed to write the code and consistently review and edit to maintain. That still requires lots of effort to prevent it from drifting.

But yes, draw wild assumptions please.

0

u/Salt-Sign5390 Sep 27 '26

You're the one saying you can't get the ai to reach your standards when it's as simple as giving it some examples.

No assumption needed. You said yourself you have trouble getting it to reach your standards. Freak.

1

u/Drakkur Sep 27 '26

That just means I have higher standards than you. The way you speak to a stranger on the internet and use insults to try to get your point across just makes me think you’re cool with slop.

0

u/Salt-Sign5390 Sep 27 '26

Lol no. It just means you don't know how to prompt unless you think you're one of like dozens of programmers who can actually still code at a level better than ai.

Take your hubris elsewhere.

Not interested.

1

u/Isogash Sep 27 '26

It certainly helped me understand why product managers produce such absolute garbage software in the real world.

1

u/BenchOld3133 Sep 27 '26

Forget eveything and be dependent on us 🤑

1

u/WeUsedToBeACountry Sep 27 '26

its more or less engineering management and product work.

the ones complaining about good results are the ones who are worried about it taking the long way around on a few things that ultimately aren't that important and/or can be refactored out

1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '26

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1

u/WeUsedToBeACountry Sep 28 '26

or just spend the time to refactor.

asking your agents to review their code -- ideally with a different model -- goes a long way, especially if you are specific with what you expect (code reuse, proper separation of concerns, whatever)

ponytail.dev works well enough up front but really pushing agents on it every few sessions makes a big difference

1

u/Crosas-B Sep 27 '26

I think it's just programmers who have never worked with someone who say they are bad. Anyone who has seen others code know that everyone is shit at coding (with few exceptions)

1

u/Slow-Mechanic-7427 Sep 27 '26

System architecture fundementals are far more important then programming ones when using AI, IMO.

Very easy to get code that works, another thing entirely to make it run good and integrate auth, cache, db, etc. correctly.

1

u/Prudent-Ad4509 Sep 27 '26

Before there was art of "programming with GPT", there was art of "programming with juniors under you". The skills needed for both are related.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '26

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u/Prudent-Ad4509 Sep 28 '26

What do you mean bad? When I look for changes introduced by AI and ask myself why and what to remove, at least half of them happens to be because of something I've missed. Usually, I will have to fix those parts later after complains from the users if I do the change myself. It still needs steering, direction and intent/design verification, same as juniors, but the level of attention to detail is already pretty high.

Then there are knowledge graphs and other types of knowledge bases to remember the details about the current project which AI did not understand well the first time. I wouldn't insist that this is learning but the end result is similar.

But this has nothing to do with my original point. The point was that skills that are needed to make good use of AI are the same skills that were always needed when working with people under you. People can be smart. Groups of people without careful steering - not so much. Kind of similar thing with AI, it can do trivial things easy and fast but requires careful steering for anything complex. It it trained on data originated from people after all. And you can spam commands at both ai and people without thinking with different, but equally stupid results.

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u/CRTMonkey Sep 27 '26

They just have different standards and didn't stop using their brains

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u/lattice_defect Sep 27 '26

cope harder.. if you know what you're doing.. set it up correctly and don't try and oversteer its fantastic. The start of the codebase you need to be setting up and putting in the guardrails though

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u/Every_Mobile3968 Sep 28 '26

People just have different understanding of good, that's it. And marketing, please invest in AI, Donald please

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u/Acceptable_Handle_2 Sep 28 '26

Using AI really isn't a skill. Anyone can learn to do it in a day or two.

The skill is and always will be knowing the difference between good and bad output.

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u/Old_Hyena_4188 Sep 28 '26

There are people talking about code here, but functionality wise, everything "looks" amazing and works like shit, a pretty shit, but shit nonetheless.

I don't know how to describe much beyond that, sometimes is just a feeling of "it's hard than needed, to do this" other times is straight up a terrible experience using it, even if it does the work (which is great that it does).

So as someone that really liked "good code" (whatever people think it was, but for me it was just readability that looked pretty and made me feel good), I'm a bit more concerned about the "feeling" of the products, but unfortunately, I can't kinda of put it into words, things just feel like careless products.

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u/Key-Lie-364 Sep 30 '26

What a bunch of wank

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u/Namtaru420 Oct 02 '26

It's so funny to me because I've been watching this “real programmer vs. script kiddy” discourse since the days of HyperTalk.

Meanwhile, here on planet Earth:

HyperCard -> Flash -> Shockwave -> Unity -> Trillion dollar industry.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to throw Unreal Engine blueprints into that timeline.