Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#161

Post by Deukhoofd » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

sharperguy wrote: post #81

Aurornis wrote: post #10

Refreshing to see an honest and balanced take on AI coding. This is what real AI-assisted coding looks like once you get past the initial wow factor of having the AI write code that executes and does what you asked. This experience is familiar to every serious software engineer who has used AI code gen and then reviewed the output: > But when I reviewed the codebase in detail in late January, the downside was obvious…

It's actually common for human-written projects to go through an initial R&D phase where the first prototypes turn into spaghetti code and require a full rewrite. I haven't been through this myself with LLMs, but I wonder to what extent they could analyse the codebase, propose and then implement a better architecture based on the initial version.

Let's be real, a lot of organizations never actually finish that R&D phase, and just continue iterating on their prototypes, and try to untangle the spaghetti for years.

I recently had to rewrite a part of such a prototype that had 15 years of development on it, which was a massive headache. One of the most useful things I used LLMs for was asking it to compare the rewritten functionality with the old one, and find potential differences. While I was busy refactoring and redesigning the underlying architecture, I then sometimes was pinged by the LLM to investigate a potential difference. It sometimes included false positives, but it did help me spot small details that otherwise would have taken quite a while of debugging.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#162

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:27 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #78

layer8 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that your opinion is based on expectations for the future then, which is notoriously difficult to predict.

It's not that hard to predict that obviously useful new technology is going to improve over time. Guns, wheels, cars, ships, batteries, televisions, the internet, smartphones, airplanes, refrigeration, electric lighting, semiconductors, GPS, solar panels, antibiotics, printing presses, steam engines, radio, etc. The pattern is obvious, the forces are clear and well-studied. If there is (1) a big gap between current c…

That list cherry picks all the successful cases where the technology improved while ignoring the many, many others where it didn't and the technology improved no further. That's dishonest.

It isn't even a good job of cherry picking: we never got mainstream supersonic passenger aircraft after the Concorde because aerospace technology hasn't advanced far enough to make it economically viable and the decrease in progress and massively increasing costs in semiconductors for cutting edge processes is very well known.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#163

Post by tadfisher » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:35 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #76

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this at all. Code quality will always matter. Context is king with LLMs, and when you fill that context up with thousands of lines of spaghetti, the LLM will (and does) perform worse. Garbage in, garbage out, that's still the truth from my experience. Spaghetti code is still spaghetti code. Something that should be a small change ends up touching multiple parts of the codebase. Not only does this increase…

I didn't say that you "want" spaghetti code or that spaghetti code is good. I said that (a) apps are getting simpler and smaller in scope and so their code quality matters less, and (b) AI is getting better at writing good code.

The Jevons paradox says otherwise. As producing apps becomes cheaper, we will not be able to help ourselves: we will make them larger until they fill all available space and cost just as much to produce and maintain.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#164

Post by csallen » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:36 PM UTC

tadfisher wrote: post #163

csallen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that you "want" spaghetti code or that spaghetti code is good. I said that (a) apps are getting simpler and smaller in scope and so their code quality matters less, and (b) AI is getting better at writing good code.

The Jevons paradox says otherwise. As producing apps becomes cheaper, we will not be able to help ourselves: we will make them larger until they fill all available space and cost just as much to produce and maintain.

That's the incorrect application of the Jevons Paradox. We won't get bigger apps, we'll get more apps.

Think about what happened to writing when we went from scribes to the printing press, and from the printing press to the web. Books and essays didn't get bigger. We just got more people writing.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#165

Post by csallen » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

camdenreslink wrote: post #107

csallen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that you "want" spaghetti code or that spaghetti code is good. I said that (a) apps are getting simpler and smaller in scope and so their code quality matters less, and (b) AI is getting better at writing good code.

Apps are getting bigger and more ambitious in scope as developers try to take advantage of any boost in production LLMs provide them.

Every metric I've seen points to there being an explosion in (a) the number of apps that exist and (b) the number of people making applications.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#166

Post by csallen » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

wiether wrote: post #82

csallen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the other side of this. Professional software engineers like many of us have a big blind spot when it comes to AI coding, and that's a fixation on code quality. It makes sense to focus on code quality. We're not wrong. After all, we've spent our entire careers in the code. Bad code quality slows us down and makes things slow/insecure/unreliable/etc for end users. However, code quality is becoming less and l…

> However, code quality is becoming less and less relevant in the age of AI coding, and to ignore that is to have our heads stuck in the sand. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. > [...] > We are increasingly moving toward a world where people who aren't sophisticated programmers are "building" their own apps with a user base of just one person. In many cases, these apps are simple and effective…

> If AI is producing 10 times more lines that are necessary to achieve the goal, that's more resources used. With the prices of RAM and SSD skyrocketing, I don't see it as a positive for regular users. If they need to buy a new computer to run their vibecoded app, are they really reaping the benefits?

I mean, I agree, but you could say this at any point in time throughout history. An engineer from the 1960s engineer could scoff at the web and the explosion in the number of progress and the decline in efficiency of the average program.

An artist from the 1700s would scoff at the lack of training and precision of the average artist/designer from today, because the explosion in numbers has certain translated to a decline in the average quality of art.

A film producer from the 1940s would scoff at the lack of quality of the average YouTuber's videography skills. But we still have millions of YouTubers and they're racking up trillions of views.

Etc.

To me, the chief lesson is that when we democratize technology and put it in the hands of more people, the tradeoff in quality is something that society is ready to accept. Whether this is depressing (bc less quality) or empowering (bc more people) is a matter of perspective.

We're entering a world where FAR more people will be able to casually create and edit the software they want to see. It's going to be a messier world for sure. And that bothers us as engineers. But just because something bothers us doesn't mean it bothers the rest of the world.

> But then, if "code quality is becoming less and less relevant", does this also applies to public/professional apps?

No, I think these will always have a higher bar for reliability and security. But even in our pre-vibe coded era, how many massive brandname companies have had outages and hacks and shitty UIs? Our tolerance for these things is quite high.

Of course the bigger more visible and important applications will be the slowest to adopt risky tech and will have more guardrails up. That's a good thing.

But it's still just a matter of time, especially as the tools improve and get better at writing code that's less wasteful, more secure, etc. And as our skills improve, and we get better at using AI.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#167

Post by maxbeech » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

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Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#168

Post by csallen » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #86

csallen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the other side of this. Professional software engineers like many of us have a big blind spot when it comes to AI coding, and that's a fixation on code quality. It makes sense to focus on code quality. We're not wrong. After all, we've spent our entire careers in the code. Bad code quality slows us down and makes things slow/insecure/unreliable/etc for end users. However, code quality is becoming less and l…

> nobody will ever have to maintain it, so it doesn't matter I'm curious about software that's actively used but nobody maintains it. If it's a personal anecdote, that's fine as well

I mean I've written some scripts and cron jobs for websites that I manage that have continued trucking for years with no changes or monitoring on my end. I suppose it's a bit easier on the web.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#169

Post by csallen » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

2ccg wrote: post #145

csallen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again it's the opposite. A landscape of vibe coded micro apps is a landscape of buggy, vulnerable, points of failure. When you buy a product, software or hardware, you do more than buy the functionality you buy the assurance it will work. AI does not change this. Vibe code an app to automate your lightbulbs all you like, but nobody is going to be paying millions of dollars a year on vibe coded slop apps and apps li…

Your whole argument is based on 'the technology improves'. Ok, so another fundamental proposition is monetary resources are needed to fund said technology improvement. Whats wrong with LLMs? They require immense monetary resources. Is that a problem for now? No because lots of private money is flowing in and Google et al have the blessing of their shareholders to pump up the amount of cash flows going into LLM based…

This has literally never happened in the history of humanity. Name one technology where development permanently stopped due to lack of funding, despite there being...

1. lots of room for progress, i.e. the theoretical ceiling dwarfed the current capabilities

2. strong incentives to continue development, i.e. monetary or military success

3. no obviously better competitors/alternatives

4. social/cultural tolerance from the public

Literally hasn't happened. Even if you can find 1 or 2 examples, they are dwarfed by the hundreds of counter examples. But more than likely, you won't find any examples, or you'll just find something recent where progress is ongoing.

Useful technology with room to improve almost always improves, as people find ways to make it better and cheaper. AI costs have already fallen dramatically since LLMs first burst on the scene a few years back, yet demand is higher than ever, as consumers and businesses are willing to pay top dollar for smarter and better models.

Re: Eight years of wanting, three months of building with AI

#170

Post by csallen » Sun, Apr 05, 2026, 9:58 PM UTC

2ccg wrote: post #146

lowsong wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what everyone says when technology democratizes something that was previously reserved for a small number of experts. What part of renting your ability to do your job is "democratizing"? The current state of AI is the literal opposite. Same for local models that require thousands of dollars of GPUs to run. Over the past 20 years software engineering has become something that just about anyone can do with li…

Dont waste your time on him. He reminds me of people who are so concentrated on one part of the picture, they can't see the whole damn thing and how all the pieces fit and interact with each other.

You're describing yourself imo. Your point ignores hundreds of years of history and says zero about the forces that shape technological development and progress, which have been studied fairly exhaustively.