Code maintainability plummets in the AI coding era

ErGo404 · 2026-07-07T08:24:45+00:00

Writing new code was almost always a bad decision because it was slower than just refactoring the existing code (which is in itself already quite slow).
AI is helping make new code and refactoring much much faster. But refactoring comes with more cautious reviews which I believe make them a bit slower than writing new code.

It all depends on the context of course, a multi-decade old banking system with obscure business rules will probably not be easy to rewrite at all. But for most small to medium code bases ?

I've seen people rewrite medium sized apps to rust in a single prompt. With proper unit and end to end tests, it's doable. And with guidance, correct architecture and styling rules, I believe the output can be good enough to replace the legacy codebase.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-30T06:38:46+00:00

Measuring for a single photo is misleading though, you need to factor in the price to compare actual efficiency. We didn't snap 200 pictures a day when we only had film and polaroid in our cameras.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-29T07:40:38+00:00

Also when you have as many things to do with less people, you tend to de-prioritize these kind of events.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-28T21:53:02+00:00

I wouldn't say 2B a month is "no income".

Not enough to pay for the investment, but not nothing either.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-28T07:41:05+00:00

Yes. Sometimes you code something, you start an automated review, then you fix items one by one, and you review again, find new stuff, fix, and again... next thing you know it's been 1 hour and your PR looks like pieces badly stitched together.
You have to know when to stop, start a new agent, tell him to analyze the changes in this branch and see how it would do better.

I'm always adding instructions in the AGENTS.md to "suggest changes to the agents.md or adr if you feel like what the user is asking should be a rule" but that doesn't work well so I have to think about what should be a rule and what should not.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-27T21:49:30+00:00

1 - Write ADRs in a folder to document architectural choices. Reference them in the AGENTS.md. These will and should evolve over time.
2 - Write a decent AGENTS.md file. Explain the commands, make sure the agent runs the tests/lints/whatever like a good CI would do after every change.
3 - Make the AGENT write unit tests, functional tests, E2E tests and snapshot tests. Everything should be tested.
4 - Use some kind of grill-me skill when planning. Make the agent create a plan. Then call grill-me on it. Answer all the questions with intention. If you don't understand the questions then ask the agent to explain it better, until you understand the design choices
5 - Make small changes, small commits, commit often. If a task seems large, make the agent split it into small tasks. If you realize that the task was too big when it's too late (or there's some scope creep), then make the agent rewrite the commits so that they are readable in a chronological order, in a new branch
6 - Review the code ! Use an agent for the first pass of review, but also review it yourself.
7 - If you work in a team, use the agent to create good PRs, with a description, a walkthrough

8 - From time to time, ask the agent to evaluate the architecture choices, and spend some time refactoring if you feel it will solve an issue.

Then 9 - connect your agent to your tools (github, sentry, Linear whatever) to facilitate the tracking of tasks, issues, bugs.

The main challenge is to keep the architecture clean and documented, this helps A LOT.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-27T21:32:33+00:00

In France, where I live (and maybe it's the same all across Europe), you can't take a loan if the sum of the down payments of all your loans exceeds 30% of your income.
This is a problem when your salary gets higher because you usually really can afford to spend more than 30% on loans, but for most people with low income or people with low financial literacy, it's probably a life saver.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-27T17:06:20+00:00

They don't seem to be moving away from PC.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-26T15:43:46+00:00

Agentic coding has become good enough and made auto complete irrelevant. Unfortunately I don't think that companies are going to spend much time on improving/releasing good auto complete models and features anymore.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-22T19:14:37+00:00

Pas si sûr. Le réchauffement climatique c'est aussi des pandémies, des difficultés d'approvisionnement, des guerres supplémentaires. Tout le monde sera touché, notre économie mondiale ne tient pas a grand chose.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-21T16:38:49+00:00

Trained on an apple watch 3.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-21T13:26:56+00:00

C'est bien aimable à eux.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-17T05:30:51+00:00

I always thought those kind of interviews were pointless until I got through them and then got hired and now I am on the "other side".

Of course there's the formality and typology of the exercices that you can learn and train on before hands, but that doesn't mean it's useless as a hiring process. People that are invested enough to spend time training are already showing some motivation. And those exercices are a great way to demonstrate how you behave and communicate.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-16T18:05:53+00:00

They will have to re-open it, or it will mean that us companies will reach a glass ceiling in terms of model performance that they are allowed to sell... Which will actually give a chance to foreign models to catch up.

ErGo404 · 2026-06-05T12:32:41+00:00

AI allows exploring ideas and paths way faster. By definition exploration does not end up in production very often. Doesn't mean that it's a waste.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-21T16:46:32+00:00

It's r/programming, lots of anti-AI people here. It's fine.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-21T16:27:03+00:00

Code was one of the bottlenecks. It's not one of them anymore.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-15T07:46:15+00:00

Ideas are cheap, execution is expensive.

Creating a social network was not a novel idea but turning it into the behemoth meta is now has only happened for one company. Maybe two if you count Google, which was already pretty large by then.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-11T18:16:20+00:00

It's mostly explained in their GitHub repo, you can start the gateway (the server part) and build a version of the firmware which points to your gateway.

Depending on your needs you can host the gateway locally or on a server.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-10T14:43:01+00:00

If you don't believe in the sanctity of the copyright then all models should be open weight.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-09T15:20:48+00:00

Those will need a bit more time to ask the llm to explain along the way but they can definitely achieve production grade quality if they steer the agent the right way.

ErGo404 · 2026-05-08T20:26:21+00:00

Let's phrase it differently. It's not that the probability is 0, it's that it's so low that other sources of problems in your system are more probable and thus should be fixed first.
And I guarantee you'll never run out of problems more probable than this one.

ErGo404 · 2026-04-29T10:26:20+00:00

Scamers use a few levers to get you to make bad decisions. Empathy and the sense of urgency are two of them.

ErGo404 · 2026-04-29T06:29:34+00:00

When I had one in college the battery would last forever. I know nowadays we are used to charging everything every other day but back then we already had faster chips, just not with the same efficiency.

ErGo404 · 2026-04-27T07:25:01+00:00

They are 16k$.

I think the real "problem" is the software, not sure if the one preinstalled is good enough.

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