21–26 of 26 posts
You should look at the code. It sucks. It will make you feel sick. It does the thing but you are right - you won’t want to maintain it. It makes you feel hollow inside like when you are coming down from acid
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"As a professional developer, I would find it very frustrating to have to debug someone else's code and also be held responsible for that code." Are you really a professional programmer? A very basic responsibility for many professionals are maintaining someone else's code.
What do you mean by "someone else's code"? Because, if I am taking responsibility for it, it is not "someone else's," it is—at least in part—my code. I am not in a position to say "this is someone else's," professionally speaking. I cannot speak for the author of the article, but for my own part, I find it frustrating to take responsibility for code which no one else believes they should own. This can come about when…
- When you are working in a team, you always take responsibility of the code your team mates has written, (review, maintain, bugfix, extend, refactor..)
- Sometimes organizations reorg and you land in owning already written code by some other team (whole takeover)
- Some other times you take a position to maintain and fix, refactor, bugfix an unknown codebase. You will work on this and leave. So it is never your code. (can be whole takeover, can be temporary ownership)Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by "someone else's code"? Because, if I am taking responsibility for it, it is not "someone else's," it is—at least in part—my code. I am not in a position to say "this is someone else's," professionally speaking. I cannot speak for the author of the article, but for my own part, I find it frustrating to take responsibility for code which no one else believes they should own. This can come about when…
Examples: - When you are working in a team, you always take responsibility of the code your team mates has written, (review, maintain, bugfix, extend, refactor..) - Sometimes organizations reorg and you land in owning already written code by some other team (whole takeover) - Some other times you take a position to maintain and fix, refactor, bugfix an unknown codebase. You will work on this and leave. So it is never…
With regard to LLM generated code, the frustration often comes from there not being a previous "someone" who had been responsible for the code; or rather, the original author was in my opinion, irresponsible, and I must assume responsibility.
To your earlier point, I think your examples can be frustrating regardless of whether or not you're a professional—it being a regular part of the job notwithstanding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Examples: - When you are working in a team, you always take responsibility of the code your team mates has written, (review, maintain, bugfix, extend, refactor..) - Sometimes organizations reorg and you land in owning already written code by some other team (whole takeover) - Some other times you take a position to maintain and fix, refactor, bugfix an unknown codebase. You will work on this and leave. So it is never…
That makes sense. For me, being "responsible," becoming the new "owner," and "debugging" code which I did not write, can each be frustrating. With regard to LLM generated code, the frustration often comes from there not being a previous "someone" who had been responsible for the code; or rather, the original author was in my opinion, irresponsible , and I must assume responsibility. To your earlier point, I think you…
On the part of vibe coded code, it can be a "bad code base" and readily so it's very understandable that reading it can be frustrating. However it could also be very well written. LLM written code can be considered a codebase that was written by a large portion of the developer community all together. It's not coming from some software. Software curated that from human written code one word at a time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes sense. For me, being "responsible," becoming the new "owner," and "debugging" code which I did not write, can each be frustrating. With regard to LLM generated code, the frustration often comes from there not being a previous "someone" who had been responsible for the code; or rather, the original author was in my opinion, irresponsible , and I must assume responsibility. To your earlier point, I think you…
That's my point. It should not be frustrating. It's part of the job. A responsibility a professional should be ready for. On the part of vibe coded code, it can be a "bad code base" and readily so it's very understandable that reading it can be frustrating. However it could also be very well written. LLM written code can be considered a codebase that was written by a large portion of the developer community all toget…
I don't think we agree on the definition of "professional" as it does or does not relate to what one feels (let alone what one should or should not feel), exclusive of what one does. I.e., I believe one can feel frustrated whilst also being professionally responsible... they can also feel frustrated and act irresponsibly, or any combination of feelings and actions. Part of professionalism to me is, in fact, performing one's responsibilities regardless of what one feels.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's my point. It should not be frustrating. It's part of the job. A responsibility a professional should be ready for. On the part of vibe coded code, it can be a "bad code base" and readily so it's very understandable that reading it can be frustrating. However it could also be very well written. LLM written code can be considered a codebase that was written by a large portion of the developer community all toget…
The interpretation of the quote which resonated with me is that, in my experience as a professional code writer, I find it frustrating to take responsibility for code which was written by someone who themselves did not engineer the code responsibly. In my experience, LLMs have made irresponsible software development significantly easier, faster, and cheaper relative to their impact on responsible software development…
Perhaps what "feel frustrating" needs to be agreed upon. I took it as I would not like to do this as I feel it to be kind of distasteful, not as I would take this but the code would be confusing.