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Ask HN: AI Code Smells

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Re: Ask HN: AI Code Smells

#2

Post by raihankr »

I think for AI-generated websites, they tend to use a lot of emojis for almost everything. Also, they use colorful and bright colors. Other indication is using a single HTML file for a page, with embedded CSS and JS. In my opinion, most developers who wrotes the codes themselves most likely wouldn't heavily embed their CSS and JS into the HTML file because of readability.

Re: Ask HN: AI Code Smells

#3

Post by ayyeye2 »

While I'm sure this question is being asked in good faith, and this site is certainly the place for discussion regarding such matters, anyone replying might want to consider that you are assiting both sides in the development of this tech by pointing out it's identifying features. All clues to how LLMs generate and display output can then be better hidden from their next iteration.

Think twice; don't feed the beast.

Re: Ask HN: AI Code Smells

#4

Post by efortis »

- Needless guards, e.g. `if (document) document.body…` in the browser.

- Backwards compatibility, "This way handles version X, which end-of-life was 10 years ago."

- Unit tests with too much overlap. "Should add positive nums, Adds neg nums, Adds zero, …"

Re: Ask HN: AI Code Smells

#5

Post by [deleted] »

ayyeye2 wrote: post #3

While I'm sure this question is being asked in good faith, and this site is certainly the place for discussion regarding such matters, anyone replying might want to consider that you are assiting both sides in the development of this tech by pointing out it's identifying features. All clues to how LLMs generate and display output can then be better hidden from their next iteration. Think twice; don't feed the beast.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: AI Code Smells

#7

Post by haute_cuisine »

The code doesn't work in subtle ways, has low level of craft and slowly halts development speed over time because abstractions haven't been well thought of. It looks good on the surface if you doesn't care to spend energy investigating why it's not or don't have enough experience to see the sloppy work.

Re: Ask HN: AI Code Smells

#8

Post by muzani »

Repeated code. Like SingleFormDialog() and SimpleDialog(). PositiveButton() and PrimaryButton(). Humans do this, but only when different people wrote the classes.

Tests that are not connected to anything. You'll have FooTest but it's all mocks, never connect to Foo. My favorite was something like Assert('this function is able to destroy a planet') which returns true as just because it asserted a string.

Comments as signboards where to go next.

Really specific comments like `Alice function has been moved to RepositoryAlice`. Especially things that nobody would ever ask about.

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