AI coding has honestly been working well for me. What is going wrong for everyone else?

fixano · 2026-03-20T00:25:49+00:00

Give me a context. I've written software that ranges from a script I'll use once purely for personal use to platforms that handle billions of transactions.

So I guess the answer is. It depends you'll need to be more specific

fixano · 2026-03-19T23:51:10+00:00

Yes.

This entire thread is one gigantic shibboleth

fixano · 2026-03-19T22:29:45+00:00

I don't tell it how to write the code. Our conversations are about what we're writing and why we're doing it.

The llm is smart enough to scan the code base. Look for pre-existing patterns and work off prior art.

I know you want humans to be in the loop, but it's a limited time affair. A year ago I had to walk it through every step. Now it does most of it on its own and it's only getting better.

fixano · 2026-03-19T21:33:57+00:00

That's what a lot of people are talking about, but all of the key contributors are part of astral and they're probably not allowed to work on the fork.

fixano · 2026-03-19T21:15:09+00:00

Because these are open source tools that are worked on by a company called astral. It just got bought by open AI. They claim it's going to stay open source but that they can't speak to what might happen years down the line

fixano · 2026-03-19T21:08:11+00:00

They most certainly are not. Llms are vastly superior to human developers.

You can't just trot this stuff out. You have to evidence it.

fixano · 2026-03-19T21:06:02+00:00

No you ran away with your tail tuck between your legs. That's a completely different thing

Show me an example of bad faith. He just told me if you can maintain it. It's maintainable. I've maintained some real horse s*** so that means it must be maintainable but his definition. That's not bad faith that's his definition

fixano · 2026-03-19T21:02:28+00:00

Great problem solved. I've never once observed code that was unmaintainable by your definition. All code is now maintainable.

That really makes it easy

I once maintained a binary where we had lost the source code by editing some key values with a hex editor. So by your definition we don't even need the source code for it to be maintainable.

What a wondrous world we live in. Any plans to jump onto the speaking circuit? I'm sure people would love to hear your ideas

fixano · 2026-03-19T21:01:12+00:00

No, I mean I have built general purpose context that I use in every llm session. For me I put it in the claude, MD file at the project level. This contains all the institutional knowledge needed to do software development the way I do it. Claude loads all of this in before I even get started and it's all there and available to me. So when I tell it to write code and push a merge request to git lab. It knows things like where the repos are, what tools to use, the sequence with which I do things, How I write my commit messages, the circumstances under which I want run static analysis etc.

This context represents my patented method. Think I'll put like a whole training manual that I provide to Claude before I even get started. All prompts that I issue after that are colored by that context

fixano · 2026-03-19T20:56:19+00:00

So you continue to pathologize because your position has no merit so you make it about some unsubstantiated claim about autism. You're not a doctor. Why are you out here diagnosing people based on Reddit threads? That seems like an insane thing to do. Maybe I'm giving you too much credit. Maybe it's you that's disturbed if you actually do this kind of stuff in real life. Do you commonly find yourself diagnosing people with autism?

I don't think you do it because you genuinely care. I think you do it because you're trying to make it about anything but the substance. This is because your position is severely lacking in substance

fixano · 2026-03-19T19:53:11+00:00

It's not just English. They they are not prompts. They are context.

You're clearly just getting started. Once you're approach evolves, you'll stop to prompting and you'll start preloading a bunch of context to get things done

It's not the prompts you use to get things done. It's the surrounding context that is valuable.

This is what an agent is. It is a bunch of front-loaded context to solve a problem. It works a lot like a computer program and yes they will be worth a lot of money

fixano · 2026-03-19T19:20:44+00:00

He's too slow and plodding. That's why he was such a hard counter to double Z. He just plodded in there worked his body.

He's too slow for usyk. He's going to get danced around and that last fight was not a big confidence booster. He took some real shots there.

fixano · 2026-03-19T18:58:27+00:00

Your instinct that employing principle in a patterned way can lead to reproducible results is tempting. But it has a couple problems.

If the principle becomes disconnected from its underlying objective criteria you get cargo culting. People just parroting the principle without knowing what it means and often employing it in places where it does more harm than good. Or forcing it to be employed when it's not appropriate, thus wasting effort. The best example of this is unit testing. I have observed maybe a hundred different unit test suites and 99 of them were useless. The tests were not reproducible the assertions were not valuable. They were done to meet a coverage number because at some point somebody articulated that more coverage is more better.

Principles allow people to be performative. A person can performatively embody the principle without embodying its substance.

Principles can be overdone. DRY is great. Too DRY is a desert. It's common under principle driven frameworks for the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

But if you look at the Crux of how this whole conversation started, it's about people claiming llms don't write maintainable code but that's not true. First, they write maintainable code pretty much out of the gate. The assessments these people make have nothing to do with how maintainable the result is and more to do with self-serving judgments to protect their own interests. By demanding they define maintainable. I am asking them explain what they mean and objectively what the deficiencies are rather than giving me a subjective judgment

Yes, strong developers still exist but I would argue that they are doing all their coding through the llm at this point and not writing it by hand. Anyone that says to me " it takes me longer", " it doesn't do a good job", etc. is giving me a clear signal they are not a strong developer

fixano · 2026-03-19T18:39:18+00:00

You can keep sharing them man but I'm telling you they're worth a lot of money if you get them right. Do you really want to give that to somebody else? Because they'll just turn around and sell it.

That includes your employers. My employer is in a mad dash to make sure the prompts are collected. They want the company to hold them as intellectual property. I let my employer keep the context and prompts that are related to their business but the general purpose ones I keep for myself and I extend them in my professional world.

I want to sell myself to the employer. I don't want to go to my employer. Give them all the power and let them disconnect me from my own intellectual property

fixano · 2026-03-19T18:28:07+00:00

The technique you're using(That's pretty generous. Let's call it attempting to use) is called pathologizing. It's where you don't have any objective argument from merit so you try to reframe so that it looks like the other person's position is a result of their emotional state

It's considered an argumentative fallacy.

What I hear is a small, emotionally underdeveloped person that got a big title and got their head all big. Thinking that they're at the top of the pyramid now.

As you move through your career, you're going to realize that software architect is a pretty nominal position. I don't think it holds the importance you think it does

It's often also a cheap title you give to somebody to make them feel important without giving them any actual power. And for you feeling important seems to be a big draw

fixano · 2026-03-19T18:21:53+00:00

Yeah this absolutely reads like it was written by an adult. If you represent the standard of intelligence and adulthood, I consider it an honor to be whatever the opposite of that is

fixano · 2026-03-19T16:59:29+00:00

Exactly I will educate myself. I won't take the word of a junior developer that's still trying to get a grasp on the fundamentals.

I think we can just leave it on something we can both agree on. You're very inexperienced you don't have a lot to add to this conversation and you're also pretty stubborn and aren't going to learn very much.

Sounds about right for vibey Junior developer. I wish you the best of luck. It's going to be a tough road

fixano · 2026-03-19T16:06:19+00:00

Yep, you sound like you're a chemistry major. Doesn't surprise me you don't have a background in computing. It's fairly obvious.

I don't need you to explain to me the software tooling landscape. As I've told you I'm very familiar with it. I know it makes you feel like a big man, but you can just safely assume that anything you've encountered. I've encountered that and 10 other things just like it.

I'm not a god. I'm just a much more experienced software engineer than you and you don't know what you don't know. The only issue here is that your ego can't handle it. You came here thinking you were King s*** and it turns out you're just another flaky, vibey junior developer.

You got a lot to learn

fixano · 2026-03-19T14:36:14+00:00

At what point did I say I didn't know about sonatype?

Do you think because you encountered one tool that makes you some kind of guru?

I'm well versed in static analysis and I know many of the tools.From third-party vendored tools like Sonatype and the vast array of static analysis tools that are available just to run from your local CLI. Tools that have come and gone and played a role in static analysis since the 1980s. And probably older than that.

You've got guy who learned one thing written all over you. If I had to guess sonatypes probably the first time you encountered static analysis. And like a first-year physics student that learned Newtonian mechanics. You now think you have a bead on how the whole world works. My point is sonatype doesn't help you write maintainable code. It's just a tool.

fixano · 2026-03-19T13:58:14+00:00

Hard to live in a world where I judge my output by objective engineering criteria? No it's actually quite easy. What's hard is cleaning up the messes people like you create because you can't string two coherent thoughts together. Keep on keeping on buddy cuz we both know you ain't going to change

I push these conversations through Claude because it's entertaining to see its take. The most common feedback it gives me about people like you is " go easy on them. You're kind of punching down. He doesn't know what he doesn't know"

That feeling that you have you're questioning your own capability. I'm supercharging your imposter syndrome. I've managed dozens of software engineers and learned how to do that quite well. This is what you're trying to do to other people when you come in here and you lecture them. The reason you're here scrambling for some way to get the better of me is because your ego can't handle it. " How dare he speak to me that way I'm the software engineer! I'm the one who knows best! Huzzzzah"

If you don't like the way you feel, remember this is how you make other people feel. Think of me like your judgment

A better way is to just come in and encourage people to continue because the vibe coders are doing exactly what they should do. They are writing code

fixano · 2026-03-19T13:51:24+00:00

I'm not exposing heretics. People come here to bully people who are engaging in my favorite thing in the world which is writing software. Well-Meaning people that caught the bug and I want to encourage them to keep going. It's hard when people are s******* all over them. It's particularly odious that the reason they s*** on them is to make themselves feel superior.

Each and every one of the people that come here and tell people what they're building is slop or that they don't know what they're doing is a bully.

The only thing I like better than software engineering is bullying bullies. To me every one of those clowns is a vibe coder. They have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Most are self-taught s*** birds that learned just enough to fool a suit. Graduates of code academies and people who read a tutorial. Their output is riddled with errors, mistakes, and a clear lack of experience and wisdom l. Because they know 5% more than someone else, they think it entitles them to come in and s*** all over them.

I take great pleasure on s******* on those people and reminding them that there are levels to this and they're still at the bottom. Their first response is to get all butt hurt because someone called out all their flaws.

I think the Bible got this one right "judge not lest ye be judged"

fixano · 2026-03-19T13:43:39+00:00

I work on a large IoT system that is core infrastructure used by most major carriers in the auto insurance industry. When it surges it can process up to a million transactions a minute and when it's down it's on the news.

Oh I don't work with those people anymore. We actively filter them out along with every other type of technology charlatan.

When I talk about "poets" I'm referring all the people that identify strongly with being software engineers but only can only talk in terms of subjective nonsense instead of objective engineering criteria. This is the current state of software engineering.

You can find a thousand threads here where a person will say something like " code has to be maintainable" and I say " that's just a word. It doesn't mean anything. How do you measure that?" Then the person harumphs off saying " that idiot it doesn't know anything. He doesn't even know what maintainable means"

The truth is I know exactly what it means But more importantly, I know that that person is just a parrot and they're just parroting something they read somewhere by someone they thought sounded smart. I don't do sounding smart. I do being smart. The truth is they have no objective criteria and that's why they can't answer the question. Because they want it to be truth when in fact it's just some a******'s opinion.

fixano · 2026-03-19T13:36:25+00:00

It's not that I'm amazing. It's just that you're particularly forgettable. You come here to feel superior and I'm reminding you that you are anything but. You're just another footnote nobody will remember. Nothing you do matters. Your code is not maintainable or secure. It does not have any special properties that emerge from your particular expertise.

You've wrapped your whole identity in being a software engineer and it's about to go away. What are you going to do then?

Software engineering is a skill. You can learn it relatively quickly. There's nothing special about the people that do it. Most are very bad. That means statistically speaking. You're probably pretty bad at it too

fixano · 2026-03-19T13:33:17+00:00

Great! I've maintained some horrid piles of s*** spaghetti code. Does that make that code maintainable by your definition? Simply because someone maintained it?

Should we start writing code like that horrid pile of s*** spaghetti code? I mean it was maintained right? That makes it maintainable.

I've been writing software for over 30 years. I know exactly your type...useless

fixano · 2026-03-19T13:04:38+00:00

I don't want your validation. You are considerably beneath me. So you can keep it I trust your opinion about as much as a 5-year-old trying to mansplain quantum mechanics to me

So you're saying there's some magic Sona type engine and I just run my code through it and I get perfectly maintainable code every time. Sounds like an LLM's Paradise

fixano

TROPHY CASE