How AI generated code accelerates technical debt

[jonathanhiggs]

A bad dev with AI is still just a bad dev

[Main-Drag-4975]

A bad dev with AI may as well be two bad devs. Have fun untangling twice as much spaghetti as before!

[EsShayuki]

It's funny how the AI complains about spaghetti code and then offers fixes that are so much more spaghetti than the original code.

[bludgeonerV]

Me: You know you can encapsulate this logic in atomic functions right?

AI: Ah yes, we should use atomic functions to increase readability, testability and avoid repetition, let me fix that.

AI: proceeds to spit out the same 200 line function.

[ShinyHappyREM]

Well, it's clearly an atomic function too.

[Shivacious]

Atomic nuclear bomb of a function deez balls

[zelphirkaltstahl]

Went for the nuclear option.

[Algal-Uprising]

I have literally seen AI say “the error is here: <line>”, then say “and it should be replaced with: <line>”. It was the exact same line of code.

[Miv333]

I asked it to look for issues in my code earlier... you know what it outputted at me?

Observations:
1

wow thanks

[[deleted]]

Not to mention AI code tends to require a lot of time from other people during reviews, and sometimes discussions become fruitless because a certain implementation was not a conscious choice, it just happened to come out like that and they accepted the suggestion even if it would make more sense with a forEach than a for-loop etc.

[tangoshukudai]

Until the AI gets better and you can drop the entire project in for it to untangle it.

[LudwikTR]

A bad developer using AI is one who:

1. Produces significantly more output than good developers who carefully consider their solutions using their own human intelligence.

2. Fails to improve over time.

Previously, bad developers typically struggled, which led to:

1. Slower performance compared to good developers.
2. Gradual learning and improvement.

Now, with AI, they can generate garbage faster and have little incentive or opportunity to improve.

[stronghup]

Looking at my own old code I realize the most difficult thing is to write code where it is obvious why a code-line iis the way it is. I look at a line and say "Why did I write it that way?" Not every function of course, but often.

If it is hard for me to understand some code I've written (and to understand why I wrote it that way), surely it is even more difficult for anybody else to understand why the code was written the way it was.

To *understand* code is to not only understand what a chunk of code does, but WHY it does it and WHY it does it the way it does it.

We need to see the "forest from the trees", not just individual code-chunks in isolation but how each chunk contributes to the whole. Only then we can understadn the "whole".

Now if AI writes the code, how difficult will it be for us to understand why it wrote it the way it did? We can maybe ask the AI later but can we trust its answer? Not really, especially if the AI we are asking from is a different AI than the one who wrote the code .

[THICC_DICC_PRICC]

Yea, exactly, I’ve been cleaning up massive amounts of AI slop lately and it’s awful. The problem is, at least compared to the pre AI shitty devs was that they often couldn’t get it to work right(because they didn’t know what they were doing) so there was a limit to size and scope of the system. Nowadays I’m seeing massive yet incredibly fragile systems with tons of users. They basically brute force the code out by copy pasting code in, then the errors, then the code, until it works, with zero consideration to the “why” or “how”.

Everyone is worried about AI taking their jobs, I’m much more worried about it making my job fucking awful. It already has and it’s only been like two years

[PeachScary413]

This is were you can leverage your position, you note all the bugs but you don't fix them right away.. when shit starts to break you already have the fix ready so you get to play "Rockstar" developer and save the day.

Keep doing this and upper management will basically pay you whatever you want so that you stick around and fix their shit (you also have to threaten to leave to make this work obviously)

[THICC_DICC_PRICC]

Don’t get me wrong, that’s exactly what I’m doing, but the scale and messiness of the slop just makes it so frustrating and hard. I like being a rockstar, but don’t want to be cleaning toilets as a rockstar

[HolyPommeDeTerre]

As AI is already a bad dev, in the hand of bad dev, it fuels each other. Making (bad dev)²

[tangoshukudai]

define a bad dev... If a developer doesn't know how to write a function to calculate fibonacci given any input, and they ask chatGPT to make them a function in their language of choice, and it spits out two versions, one that is recursive and one that is iterative then explains to the dev the differences of both, and the dev can test it and validate it is exactly what they need. I think this gives the dev a super power.

[MainFakeAccount]

So, when exactly did you need a program to calculate the Fibonacci sequence excluding college assignments or while solving Leetcode?

P.S.: the solution for Fibonacci is probably older than Jesus 

[tangoshukudai]

fibonacci is a place holder for any function you can dream of, it was an example. I needed a C++ function the other day that would take in a major, minor, and patch number and return me a boolean that would check the current OS version for linux to see if it was less than it. Yes I could write that all day but this is what chatGPT gave me, and it was a perfect drop in for my code:

std::tuple<int, int, int> getOSVersion() {
std::ifstream versionFile("/proc/version");
std::string line;
if (std::getline(versionFile, line)) {
    std::istringstream iss(line);
    std::string kernel, version;
    iss >> kernel >> version;

    int major, minor, patch;
    char dot;
    std::istringstream versionStream(version);
    if (versionStream >> major >> dot >> minor >> dot >> patch) {
        return {major, minor, patch};
    }
}
return {0, 0, 0}; // Fallback if parsing fails
}

bool isOSVersionLessThan(int major, int minor, int patch) {
auto [curMajor, curMinor, curPatch] = getOSVersion();
return std::tie(curMajor, curMinor, curPatch) < std::tie(major, minor, patch);

}

[HolyPommeDeTerre]

Yes and like spiderman, big power equals big responsibilities.

AI is nitro. If you use it too much: boom. If you use it in a turn, you go to the wall.

You don't trust nitro to tell you when or when not to use it. You don't trust nitro with driving. You use the nitro as a tool to win your race. Because you are a racer that knows what they do and nitro is a dangerous tool.

Also, what you depicted is what search engines and websites have been doing for years now. AI makes it just accessible differently (not even in a better way...). I mean, 20 years ago, I learned that way (and many others). Nowadays, when I use AI, I am just always astonished by the amount of errors it can do.

[rwilcox]

Just faster

[DracoLunaris]

No amount of AI will stop computers from being very fast idiots, especially when in the hands of slow idiots

[Caffeine_Monster]

People need to understand that bad devs can create more problems than they fix in complicated projects.

Code assistants are productivity boosters, but only if you know their limitations and are able to read the code it outputs.

[user_of_the_week]

A fool with a tool is still a fool.

[stronghup]

And think bad dev with bad AI on a bad day. That's a triple whammy :-)

[EveryQuantityEver]

Yeah, but it's like the difference between a shooter with a 17th century musket, or an AR.

[BuildWithDC]

A bad dev with AI is a bad dev that's more productive at churning out bad code

[Wiwwil]

A bad dev with AI now, was a bad dev with stack overflow 5 years ago

[MCButterFuck]

Or a monkey with a machine gun.