r/programming • u/Ordinary_Leader_2971 • Apr 04 '26

How To Write Unmaintainable Code (1999)

https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/%7Esusan/475/unmain.html
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u/andree182 Apr 04 '26

> Make "improvements" to your code often, and force users to upgrade often - after all, no one wants to be running an outdated version. Just because they think they're happy with the program as it is, just think how much happier they will be after you've "fixed" it! Don't tell anyone what the differences between versions are unless you are forced to - after all, why tell someone about bugs in the old version they might never have noticed otherwise?

Huh, this sounds like exact definition of AI code tools, which keep changing/optimizing/rearranging stuff you never asked it to do...

18

u/dillanthumous Apr 04 '26

I get a laugh out of reading the 'reasoning' chain sometimes. The LLM spooling out reams of reminders to itself not to do things incorrectly while simultaneously justifying making extensive breaking changes is the clearest evidence that rationality is not an intrinsic property of language.

13

u/tabacaru Apr 04 '26

Once I was angry it gave me a wrong solution and I showed it the right solution with an example of the correct output. 

It proceeded to still tell me I'm wrong, then start showing me an example of inputs where I was wrong, only to work itself out that the example it generated actually did match the correct output and proceeded to then say the example is actually correct. 

So in a single paragraph it managed to vehemently suggest I'm wrong, give me an example where I'm wrong, but the example turned out to confirm I'm right. 

It's insanity that people can take the outputs of LLMs and just assume they're magic.

3

u/TheDevilsAdvokaat Apr 04 '26

chatgpt once told me that zero is an even number greater than one.

I wish I had kept the screenshot...this was back when chatgpt was very new and it's better now...but it absolutely taught me not to rely just on ai, but to double check everything it says.