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If someone comes with a pretty decent idea and execution, it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm, does it? Like if the next torvalds ships

If someone comes with a pretty decent idea and execution, it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm, does it? Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written.

spicyusername 22d ago
One thing I keep discovering about the agentic era of programming is that all of the old lessons and bits of wisdom about programming are still valid. They're just 10 to 100x more important now that you can generate 10,000 lines in an hour. e.g. Break your code up into loosely coupled modules, don't have leaky abstractions, don't have huge God files, have good black box end-to-end testing, do the design work before the implementation, do lots of automated testing, have good documentation, etc. Here is another one that was always true, end users only care about the observable behavior of your program. Does it solve the problem in a performant way? Is it reliable? And another one, it was common when you inherited a large code base that was mature and written before you to not have any clue how most of it worked. We have to accept that the art of nudging the text around is just not part of producing code for money anymore.
- silent_ssh 22d ago
  Agree. Now that we're seeing the quality of software we use worsening (not improving!) with increased usage of LLMs to produce code, it's even more important than before to get the fundamentals solid. I don't mean "fundamentals" as in "easy things in CS", but the mechanisms behind the systems we build (on top of). And, not being fresh out of school and having experience _suffering_ with poorly designed systems / processes is also still an advantage, as that suffering will ultimately let one make more informed design choices.
  - spicyusername 22d ago
    Now that we're seeing the quality of software we use worsening Are we seeing that though? Or do we want to be seeing that?
- user43928 22d ago
  In my experience little of what you said is important is actually needed: > Break your code up into loosely coupled modules > don't have leaky abstractions Not needed. The AI handles breaking up code and I mostly don't review abstractions. > don't have huge God files Less true than ever. The AI can read a 10k line file the same way it can read 20 files with 500 lines. > have good black box end-to-end testing The AI does the testing by default, and it is fine. I don't write the docs nor do I do design work. Now what I said is certainly going to offend some users here, but that's how it is, and I know the quality of the product built with this workflow. This workflow works well for software you develop alone, it is going to be trickier to adopt it in a team. Still, in my opinion the writing is on the wall for our profession. No one can say with any certainty to what degree our expertise is still needed in the software development process in a year or two.
  - spicyusername 21d ago
    The AI handles The AI handles The AI does That's what I'm saying... in the new era these things are more important than ever to better keep agentic programming on track...
vb-8448 22d ago
> it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm In theory no, but for a successful execution you must have people that understand what's going on, otherwise the competitor that understands will eat you. > who cares how was it written. In the pre AI era a lot of sw was written by interns, juniors, some bigcon consultants, some offshore indian or east-european dudes, it didn't even matter before.
- chrisjj 22d ago
  > who cares how was it written. Everyone who wants it to work properly.
  - vb-8448 21d ago
    We live in a world where a broken feature is far more important than no-feature. Companies used to release broken software on purpose since a very long time.
pydry 22d ago
>Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written. nope. but, vibe coded slop is all we're actually seeing.
skydhash 22d ago
> Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written. I was reading a biography of Tovalds and one of the core things that mark the birth of Linux was the drive to learn. Same when reading “Coders at Work”, the will to learn and make things happen is a common recurrence. I’ve never seen LLM coding that is not “I can’t bother to learn about this”. It’s always about magicking answers out of thin air, not about motivation to explore some fields.

spicyusername 22d ago

One thing I keep discovering about the agentic era of programming is that all of the old lessons and bits of wisdom about programming are still valid. They're just 10 to 100x more important now that you can generate 10,000 lines in an hour. e.g. Break your code up into loosely coupled modules, don't have leaky abstractions, don't have huge God files, have good black box end-to-end testing, do the design work before the implementation, do lots of automated testing, have good documentation, etc. Here is another one that was always true, end users only care about the observable behavior of your program. Does it solve the problem in a performant way? Is it reliable? And another one, it was common when you inherited a large code base that was mature and written before you to not have any clue how most of it worked. We have to accept that the art of nudging the text around is just not part of producing code for money anymore.

silent_ssh 22d ago
Agree. Now that we're seeing the quality of software we use worsening (not improving!) with increased usage of LLMs to produce code, it's even more important than before to get the fundamentals solid. I don't mean "fundamentals" as in "easy things in CS", but the mechanisms behind the systems we build (on top of). And, not being fresh out of school and having experience _suffering_ with poorly designed systems / processes is also still an advantage, as that suffering will ultimately let one make more informed design choices.
- spicyusername 22d ago
  Now that we're seeing the quality of software we use worsening Are we seeing that though? Or do we want to be seeing that?
user43928 22d ago
In my experience little of what you said is important is actually needed: > Break your code up into loosely coupled modules > don't have leaky abstractions Not needed. The AI handles breaking up code and I mostly don't review abstractions. > don't have huge God files Less true than ever. The AI can read a 10k line file the same way it can read 20 files with 500 lines. > have good black box end-to-end testing The AI does the testing by default, and it is fine. I don't write the docs nor do I do design work. Now what I said is certainly going to offend some users here, but that's how it is, and I know the quality of the product built with this workflow. This workflow works well for software you develop alone, it is going to be trickier to adopt it in a team. Still, in my opinion the writing is on the wall for our profession. No one can say with any certainty to what degree our expertise is still needed in the software development process in a year or two.
- spicyusername 21d ago
  The AI handles The AI handles The AI does That's what I'm saying... in the new era these things are more important than ever to better keep agentic programming on track...

vb-8448 22d ago

> it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm In theory no, but for a successful execution you must have people that understand what's going on, otherwise the competitor that understands will eat you. > who cares how was it written. In the pre AI era a lot of sw was written by interns, juniors, some bigcon consultants, some offshore indian or east-european dudes, it didn't even matter before.

chrisjj 22d ago
> who cares how was it written. Everyone who wants it to work properly.
- vb-8448 21d ago
  We live in a world where a broken feature is far more important than no-feature. Companies used to release broken software on purpose since a very long time.

pydry 22d ago

>Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written. nope. but, vibe coded slop is all we're actually seeing.

skydhash 22d ago

> Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written. I was reading a biography of Tovalds and one of the core things that mark the birth of Linux was the drive to learn. Same when reading “Coders at Work”, the will to learn and make things happen is a common recurrence. I’ve never seen LLM coding that is not “I can’t bother to learn about this”. It’s always about magicking answers out of thin air, not about motivation to explore some fields.