If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
1–10 of 13 posts
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#2Lately I’ve had a contrarian feeling about AI-assisted development.
If AI is going to write a large percentage of the code, the highest-leverage thing a developer can do might actually be slowing down and deeply understanding the system (not generating more code faster).
I noticed I was spending more time reconstructing context than actually building: – figuring out what changed – tracing data flow – rebuilding mental models before I could even prompt properly (without breaking other features) - debugging slop with more slop
Better understanding → better prompts, fewer breaking changes, and more real debugging.
Over the weekend I hacked on a small prototype exploring this idea. It visualizes execution flow and system structure to make it easier to reason about unfamiliar or AI-modified codebases.
Not really a polished “product” — more a thinking tool / experiment.
I’m curious whether others are running into the same bottleneck, or if this is just a local maximum I’ve fallen into.
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#3Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary.
If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly, is it really necessary for understanding the code entirely ? We seem to develop on many abstractions already ignoring how the code actually executes on the hardware without any issues.
Secondly, wouldn't AI help in understanding the codebase and make that easier as well ? Debugging must also immensely benefit from AI assisted tools.
So i'm less concerned overall with the auto-generated code as long as the code thats landing is reviewed by an AI bot that's aggressively prompting to ensure the code is as simple as it could be.
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#4Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary. If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly, is it really necessary for understanding the code entirely ? We seem to develop on many abstractions already ignoring how the code actually executes on the hardware without any issues. Secondly, wouldn't AI help in und…
>If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly [...]
But how would you ever know if this assumption is true?
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#5Lately I’ve had a contrarian feeling about AI-assisted development. If AI is going to write a large percentage of the code, the highest-leverage thing a developer can do might actually be slowing down and deeply understanding the system (not generating more code faster). I noticed I was spending more time reconstructing context than actually building: – figuring out what changed – tracing data flow – rebuilding menta…
I've had this same thought. Given humans were the primary authors of code, the tooling has optimized for writing (IDEs, Text Editors, LSPs, etc). Even though we all know we read more code than write, the tooling space for reading code is rather small, I can only think of stuff like SourceGraph and Github. I'm sure big companies have internal tooling for this, but even then I feel the best experience exploring a single repo today is your EDITor.
I'm also experimenting with building a platform that is optimal for reading code particularly distributed systems since they have many non-local dependencies and are harder to explore locally in code editors/viewers. I def fall in the camp that current AI tools can probably help us understand our systems better than they can contribute code to them. One win of using AI to help us analyze large codebases is that if they can extract useful things for us, they can also extract useful things for their own agentic loops.
Let me know if you wanna chat more about this, would love to bounce some ideas/contribute!
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#6Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary. If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly, is it really necessary for understanding the code entirely ? We seem to develop on many abstractions already ignoring how the code actually executes on the hardware without any issues. Secondly, wouldn't AI help in und…
yeah, this is exactly AI helping you understand the codebase
but not using plain text -- it uses diagrams/execution flows/animations etc
it's easier to parse
i think working at a fast-moving startup can make you understand this problem more
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#7Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary. If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly, is it really necessary for understanding the code entirely ? We seem to develop on many abstractions already ignoring how the code actually executes on the hardware without any issues. Secondly, wouldn't AI help in und…
>> Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary.
Honestly, I don't know what crack you people are smoking.
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#8Lately I’ve had a contrarian feeling about AI-assisted development. If AI is going to write a large percentage of the code, the highest-leverage thing a developer can do might actually be slowing down and deeply understanding the system (not generating more code faster). I noticed I was spending more time reconstructing context than actually building: – figuring out what changed – tracing data flow – rebuilding menta…
I've had this same thought. Given humans were the primary authors of code, the tooling has optimized for writing (IDEs, Text Editors, LSPs, etc). Even though we all know we read more code than write, the tooling space for reading code is rather small, I can only think of stuff like SourceGraph and Github. I'm sure big companies have internal tooling for this, but even then I feel the best experience exploring a singl…
I would like to chat more about it. Let’s connect (vladkorobov.com)
Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#9Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary. If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly, is it really necessary for understanding the code entirely ? We seem to develop on many abstractions already ignoring how the code actually executes on the hardware without any issues. Secondly, wouldn't AI help in und…
>> Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary. Honestly, I don't know what crack you people are smoking.
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Re: If AI writes most of the code, understanding codebases becomes the bottleneck
#10Would it really become a bottleneck ? Only if we force a human in the loop when it may not be really necessary. If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly, is it really necessary for understanding the code entirely ? We seem to develop on many abstractions already ignoring how the code actually executes on the hardware without any issues. Secondly, wouldn't AI help in und…
>If there are well defined contracts for the software, and the software behaves correctly [...] But how would you ever know if this assumption is true?
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