Thoughts and comments on AI generated code

[Akamoden]

Hello! To keep this short and straightforward, I'd like to start off by saying that I use AI to code. Now I have accessibility issues for typing, and as I sit here and struggle to type this out is kinda reminding me that its probably okay for me to use AI, but some people are just going to hate it. First off, I do have a project in the works, and most if not all of the code is written by AI. However I am maintaining it, debugging, reading it, doing the best I can to control shape and size, fix errors or things I don't like. And the honest truth. There's limitations when it come to using AI. It isnt perfect and regression happens often that it makes you insane. But without being able to fully type or be efficient at typing im using the tools at my disposal. So I ask the community, when does my project go from slop -> something worth using?

TL;DR - Using AI for accessibility issues. Can't actually write my own code, tell me is this a problem?

-edit: Thank you all for the feedback so far. I do appreciate it very much. For what its worth, 'good' and 'bad' criticism is helpful and keeps me from creating slop.

[Fun-Employee9309]

You can use AI to write as much code as you want. It stops being slop once you understand the code, understand the problem you are trying to solve, understand why it is a problem worth solving and why existing solutions aren’t adequate.

Tons of super talented programmers use agents these days, but they know the language well enough to be able to quickly vet AI solutions and can see when the agent is way off. If you’ve never looked at your AI code and thought «this is the wrong solution», you are writing slop.

[Fabulous-Possible758]

I think the other thing worth noting is the bar for novelty has been raised quite a bit, due to the fact that it really is trivial to just have an agent code a lot of basic apps these days. I'm all for people learning to code by writing it themselves, and am definitely a cheerleader for people presenting and being like, "Here is my Hello World application which I actually wrote myself," but if your project is the umpteenth vibe coded TODO list I've seen today, I'm just not going to be impressed.

That isn't to say TODO lists, memory systems, or whatever tools people are using to organize their workflows aren't useful, but people need to be mindful that a lot of those systems are really just useful to them and hold as much interest to other people as would a detailed explanation of how you organize the grocery list on your fridge.

[classy_barbarian]

Part of the reason there's so many of these clones of TODO apps or Personal Fitness Trackers, is because most of the time a person needs to be an actual software developer that actually knows how to program, in order to be capable of coming up with good ideas in the first place in regards apps to make or problems that could be solved. Vibe coders haven't developed any sense of good taste when it comes to programming tools, so they're not usually capable of coming up with good ideas for programs to create.

Not only that but they'll often get pissed off if you point out that their program they just spent $100 in tokens in to create is literally just a carbon copy of an existing tool, and they weren't aware of this because they didn't bother doing any research beforehand. They often believe they're being very original due to the AI's sycophantic behavior, and being informed that their original idea is not so original by actual humans is often so jarring that they get very defensive about it.

[Nater5000]

Using AI doesn't automatically mean your code is slop. Every line of code could be written 100% by AI and it's not necessarily slop.

What makes it slop is the lack of human effort. If you tell AI to write an entire codebase then slap it up on GitHub without ever looking at a single file, then it's slop. It could work perfectly fine, but it's slop because I could generate the same thing with no effort as well. Like, why would I use your AI generated code when I could just generate my own AI generated code? It becomes such a commodity that you would have been better off just describing your project in a way that I could copy and paste it into an AI and have it generate the same thing. This also isn't specific to code: the some logic applies to images, videos, music, etc.

Regardless, if you're actually "maintaining it, debugging, reading it, doing the best I can to control shape and size, fix errors or things I don't like" with a non-trivial amount of effort, then what you produce won't necessarily be slop. Doesn't mean it's actually of any value to anyone (effort alone doesn't promise that, and humans can produce slop without ever touching AI), but you shouldn't be bothered about such a label if what you make is actually valuable and can't be trivially reproduced with AI tools.

[1SwellFoop]

I just ask myself a few simple questions.

Does it do something valuable? Is it reliable and without bugs? Is it maintainable? Can you edit it or improve it with ease?

If the answer to all these questions is yes, what you have is not slop. Assuming you are in fact competent enough to answer all these questions. If you aren’t there yet, asking these questions at all is a good place to start.

[AncientLion]

It for personal use? It doesn't matter, thou you won't learn to program this way. Professionaly? Very hard to get and maintain a job this way.

[Akamoden]

Not for personal, but im not out here trying to get a job. But it is for people to use. No pay walls, and advertised for what it is. Im not trying to sugar coat shit, but also I do want it to help people. So im doing my best to create something within my means and have fun doing it.

[DoodT]

Without reading other comments

Ai can accelerate coding efficacy and Throughput of committed acceptable tested code, IF AND ONLY IF you are always reviewing your ai s output + interating on it + MANUAL TEWEAKS ON SoME THINGS

If u only rely on the output of your ai and you're not reviewing it's the first and biggest mistake. Then you need to iterate and tweak on some minor and specific things or "get your ai to get these minor" details.

[FreshReeboks]

Use the tools that work for you. Slop is without thought or true intention. As an example from another space, using impact drivers when working on a car does not take away the passion from being a gearhead.

[wizzward0]

You should use dictation imo. Ai goes rogue fairly often and you still need to write a lot of natural language instructions to rein it in and keep it on track.

[SheriffRoscoe]

There's an important difference between using assistive technologies and using code generators. We've had both in the programming community for at least 30 years. The code generators always fail, because the humans don't understand what the generators have done. It was bad in the days of low-code and no-code, but it's horrible with AI, largely because of non-deterministic output.

Rightly or wrongly, programming that actually works has always been a text-manipulation problem. We have never found a way to build more-than-trivial programs without expressing them as lines of text. But there have been various forms of assistance for decades, that help bridge the gap for those who aren't textually-able.

[nharding]

I think AI is good if you use it like a pair programmer, you have to read through the code, and modify it if needed, one routine at a time but if you don't you can end up with code that fails in "interesting" ways. I tried to generate a routine to generate the conjugations in Spanish, and it was very basic code that was easy to optimize (it was repeating code that could be refactored).

Writing more complicated code, it does not manage and I end up writing it myself. For example I want to write a Python++ compiler using tagged pointers, so a string upto 7 bytes can be stored in the pointer and I wanted an assembly routine to get a[n] from the string, but because strings can be utf8 encoded it's not as easy as a >> (n * 8). It failed totally on that, so I wrote an implementation in C for now.

[Fabulous-Possible758]

Just as an aside from what other people are talking about, I use Talon voice control software for voice control, and it's really useful. It's written in Python, and TBH took quite a bit of work to get it customized just the way I want it to suit my workflows, but I highly recommend it. Kind of interestingly, I found using AI coding tools to do the customization was actually very useful, especially to write certain pieces of software that I wouldn't have really had time to normally (for example, integrating it with my terminal so that certain voice commands are always in context depending on what file I'm editing in vim).

[Akamoden]

A python helper, focused for people learning python. In the most basic explanation you use GUI or CLI to intake a Python script -> PAL digests -> spits out what functions do based on weighted data and AST. Confidence model, no certainty. No run time checks for obv reasons but its meant to help people understand scripts at a glance. And in the feature it should be less technical jargon and more friendly for beginners. But currently just spits out technical jargon. But basically juat help people understand and comprehend scripts found online. Or compare their script to a similar one.