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We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

odra.dev

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Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#101

Post by neitherboosh »

zie1ony wrote: post #2

Creator here, There is a new kind of task for software engineers these days. A client calls, asks for a "small refactor," and sends you 100k lines of AI-generated spaghetti. And this is great! This is something we can work with. Any experienced engineer can look at a codebase like that and quickly see what to refactor, where a library replaces a few thousand hand-rolled lines, and what smells bad. Removing the first…

The copy on your website itself kind of reads like LLM slop (eg. "One week. Three senior engineers. $10,000"). You may have written it yourself and marketing copy just tends to look like this, but it doesn't inspire confidence that your service will actually improve my code.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#102

Post by ummmmdddd »

thraway3837 wrote: post #39

We replaced a 120,000 USD/year low-code/no-code platform that was running a lot of workflows. And we have another platform that is also similar that we are on track to replace by EOY. Both have been replaced by "vibe" coding. It works well. Everyone's happy. People are having fun with it. We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback. JIRA tickets get created, and we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to…

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Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#103

Post by ribs »

zie1ony wrote: post #2

Creator here, There is a new kind of task for software engineers these days. A client calls, asks for a "small refactor," and sends you 100k lines of AI-generated spaghetti. And this is great! This is something we can work with. Any experienced engineer can look at a codebase like that and quickly see what to refactor, where a library replaces a few thousand hand-rolled lines, and what smells bad. Removing the first…

I wonder how you do it when faced with what are undoubtedly poor functional, regression, and unit test coverages.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#104

Post by kdheiwns »

blanched wrote: post #49
thraway3837 wrote: post #39

We replaced a 120,000 USD/year low-code/no-code platform that was running a lot of workflows. And we have another platform that is also similar that we are on track to replace by EOY. Both have been replaced by "vibe" coding. It works well. Everyone's happy. People are having fun with it. We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback. JIRA tickets get created, and we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to…

> we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to it, and create a PR > none of them have read any more than a few lines of code So what do you / your team do?

It's really quite interesting how there are always posts on HN with people talking about how AI made their life great, did it cheaply, made a great product, and saved the day. But whenever someone asks for specifics, the questions are always dodged or answered very vaguely. It's rare that anyone ever even says what their product does.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#105

Post by ummmmdddd »

14 wrote: post #67
thraway3837 wrote: post #39

We replaced a 120,000 USD/year low-code/no-code platform that was running a lot of workflows. And we have another platform that is also similar that we are on track to replace by EOY. Both have been replaced by "vibe" coding. It works well. Everyone's happy. People are having fun with it. We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback. JIRA tickets get created, and we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to…

I have always felt that AI will be much like how we all now have a calculator in our pockets (despite our math teachers telling us that would never happen lol). For math yes one could sit and do long division and multiplication and so on but having a calculator as a tool obviously makes things so much faster. But you still need to have the knowledge of how math works like the order of operations for it to be correct…

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Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#106

Post by xmcp123 »

fwlr wrote: post #12

“We use Claude Code too” I understand that it’s probably impossible to sell non-AI-assisted solutions to AI-pilled companies (even when their headaches are AI-induced), but my gut reaction to “take an AI-inflated codebase and apply AI deflation to it” is something like “that’s akin to applying two rounds of lossy transcoding; the errors don’t cancel out, they cross-multiply”.

I’ve reviewed and worked on a lot of vibe coded apps (I’m an engineer, 20 YOE).

I can basically split it into 3 groups.

1) Pure vibe code. No software experience.

2) AI with someone who knows the software development process and some things about software, but can’t code.

3) Engineers using AI assistance, reading/reviewing code, forcing structure.

If someone can pay to replace #1 with #3 it’s very worth it. The quality between each of these tiers is enormous.

I actually got curious and asked AI to look at each module in a codebase, and tell me about who wrote it without looking at git.

It successfully profiled all 3 of these groups and correctly attached them to the right module.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#107

Post by titularcomment »

14 wrote: post #67
thraway3837 wrote: post #39

We replaced a 120,000 USD/year low-code/no-code platform that was running a lot of workflows. And we have another platform that is also similar that we are on track to replace by EOY. Both have been replaced by "vibe" coding. It works well. Everyone's happy. People are having fun with it. We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback. JIRA tickets get created, and we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to…

I have always felt that AI will be much like how we all now have a calculator in our pockets (despite our math teachers telling us that would never happen lol). For math yes one could sit and do long division and multiplication and so on but having a calculator as a tool obviously makes things so much faster. But you still need to have the knowledge of how math works like the order of operations for it to be correct…

The main difference is (simple) calculators are deterministic and monotonic. Meaning it executes a set of instructions in a predetermined way to produce its output. Bringing LLMs to that level is a whole another ball game. But we'll see, perhaps the arithmetic nature of algorithms will be replaced by a whole lot of tensors in the near future.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#108

Post by Schiendelman »

thraway3837 wrote: post #96
blanched wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we ask AI to reference that ticket, code to it, and create a PR > none of them have read any more than a few lines of code So what do you / your team do?

You know, that question should trouble us more. But honestly we've all asked ourselves that same question and I think our collective response is too nuanced to try to type properly but I'll try. Tools are always made out to seem like the human could be replaced. We've seen that every time some new technology comes out that some people claim will replace humans once and for all! But this does not seem to be true. What…

This is absolutely my experience. And I'm commenting on HN a lot more now too - but in between, I'm doing competitive analysis, trying out a fix I implemented or a feature I added, marketing, talking to friends about their bug reports...

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#109

Post by dawnerd »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #41
fwlr wrote: post #12

“We use Claude Code too” I understand that it’s probably impossible to sell non-AI-assisted solutions to AI-pilled companies (even when their headaches are AI-induced), but my gut reaction to “take an AI-inflated codebase and apply AI deflation to it” is something like “that’s akin to applying two rounds of lossy transcoding; the errors don’t cancel out, they cross-multiply”.

Not exactly. It’s more a kin to giving an electric drill to a tradesman vs a screw driver. The tradesman will use the electric drill effectively.

People keep making this analogy not understanding that trades folks will use the right tool for the job, not just whatever is newer / more advanced. Air nailers exist but hammers are still used. Drills can screw in screws but screwdrivers are still used. You wouldn’t use an electric drill for a lot of jobs. People will also try to equate it to an electric saw vs hand saw, but again time and place for both.

Re: We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code

#110

Post by ummmmdddd »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #75

AI slop? Humans write slop too. We’ve all heard the stories, companies outsource projects to India, only to bring them back to the US for the local team to fix. I saw it myself at a past job. We hired a consulting firm to convert a project. They outsourced it to India. In the end, we had to hire a US company to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Talk about slop!

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