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edanmHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

For almost every developer, the majority of the code you use every day, whether in software you use …

… For almost every developer, the majority of the code you use every day, whether in software you use or actual code you're shipping, is not code you've ever read. And no one seems to have a problem with it, because we've built lots of processes around this. It's only when the code is written by an AI and not a coworker or random library author that people seem to have a problem. And I get it! AI wasn't very good at writing code two years ago. Maybe even a year ago. I think it's good now, but maybe you don't - ok, that's fine, maybe it'll only live up to your standards in a year or two or ten. But that doesn't seem to be what people are arguing, it's not "AI isn't good enough", it's "how can we possibly ship code we never read", and my point is that we've all been doing this for our entire careers.

Original discussionControl the Ideas, Not the Code189 source comments · at import
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DA
dancepartyHN

Very uncomfortable to read. The proposed idea of not reading the code you ostensibly wrote, doesn’t just challenge the traditional workflow or methodology, it challenges the identity of a programmer itself. For experienced, respected programmers like antirez perhaps reading and writing code truly has just gotten in the way of the ideas, but I cannot identify with that perspective. The devil is in the details, reading other peoples code (and code the LLM writes) evolves the idea itself, and changes my understanding of it. My view on this is so biased by the direct relation of code I read and write to feeding myself and my family (the vast majority of my programming is for a paycheck) that suggestions of removing myself from the process feel grim, not exciting.

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YL
yladizHN

You do not need to understand an entire program to get the benefit of reading a chunk of source code that is part of that program.

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PH
phmxHN

The code we've shipped throughout our careers certainly wasn't reviewed only by us. It was reviewed by programmers with more expertise in the relevant area. That's a healthy and efficient division of labor, expertise, and responsibility.

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HU
huimangHN

The idea is that -someone- reviewed the lines of code they modified, leading to the sum of code being looked at by many human eyes. Using someone else's code has always been a system of trust in this way. AI/Vibecoding breaks this social trust, hence the general aversion to using those codebases or bringing LLM code in. It's not really about the general quality of the agents. It's about the code no longer being reviewed and understood by a human. How can one place trust in that? Unit tests don't replace careful review and considerate design.

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