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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

#111
post #56

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?

My guess is design (features/functionality, not code). When you don't have to write every line of code and you can quickly iterate on features, you have a lot of freedom to dial in what you really want out of an app.

YES!!! Very well said and captures what I was trying to convey.

There's also certain features of an application that most of us engineers know how it works or how to do it, but it is just so painful to do it by hand. Or other features that you've always wanted because you saw another app do it and it was beautifully done and you can just "have" that feature in your app too.

The joy is in seeing the feature come alive, not so much in fighting the computer.

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

#112

I guess it was only a matter of time before this niche of business developed. AI is an imprecise "programming" language, full of ambiguity (English) trying to produce precise relationships between different concepts. It certainly works great on small scale, building block type of things, but the more a project grows in complexity, components, interfacing with other heterogenous systems in other languages or APIs, und…

> I guess it was only a matter of time before this niche of business developed. This is a fun webpage, and it feeds a certain bias, but there really isn't a "niche" beyond getting people to upvote it for the lulz. I would be extremely surprised if they find a single paying customer. And to be fair, lots of grifters have done the fake it till you make it act on HN, so someone saying "Oh I'm totally going to give them…

Lots of small moving parts that build up into a large architected platform, which requires careful design, otherwise you get a big ole ball of "it mostly works when we first created it but don't touch it". And yes, bad developers are susceptible to creating the same thing. That's the whole issue with vibe coding, it creates something that works, but is brittle, because there are no strict architecture requirements around the entire design besides vague suggestions like "follow best practices", and as it makes mistakes, it just patches whatever it can to make it work, instead of fixing the root problem with the design.

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

#113

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…

Thank you for the thorough reply! I also appreciate that you recognized my question as good faith (and my apologies, based on other replies I should have been less brief to avoid misinterpretation.)

It seems my definition of "vibe coding" was wrong after all, at least in this case, and that you're still doing design. My initial read was that this was fully AI-powered, and while that sounded interesting, it did leave me wondering what the humans did :)

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

#114
$MY_STARTUP does — something — similar. I — love — that — you — say — you'll — do — this — in — a — week, — and — then — a — two — week — warranty? What — are — you.. replacing — an — engine? — Gotta — keep — that — head-gasket sealed — tight.

/s Isn't this just called a consultancy with a super short contract term? How are you actually going to unscrew anything in one week?

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

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Press y to doubt that 1k/m using opus… that cannot be true.

It's easy to believe if it's 5x $200 subscriptions. Paying by the token is insanely expensive. Only the 5̵ ̵R̵i̵c̵h̵e̵s̵t̵ ̵K̵i̵n̵g̵s̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵E̵u̵r̵o̵p̵e̵ Biggest Tech Co's can afford that. But the subscriptions are cheap honestly. Yeah they say it's not for enterprise usage but ok whatever. Not paying $10k when $200 gets you the same value (seriously)

>Yeah they say it's not for enterprise usage but ok whatever.

For now, it's clear that they will likely begin restricting the subs or severely cut back their token allowance.

I could also see Claude looking at source code/repos to try and figure out if it's closed source. If true, demand token payment.

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

#117

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…

writing code is the actual fun part of the job though.

it’s a shame we automated that instead of the boring system design shit.

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

#118
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with AI, documentation driven development is an understatement, if you take the time not just to document but to also provide lots of examples and potentially even data structures for the implementation (including intermediary data structures if you know them) the output is better than anything you would make in reasonable time.

If you have done or are doing all of that, why not just use the code you’ve made inside your docs? Like, are you using languages where data structures are hard to write and/or work with? Typescript, Kotlin, Python and Ruby (via Sorbet or DryStruct) are all really easy to write all those data structures and code.

what I meant was dictating the data structures for the code (transformations) the LLM is going to write.

    "Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious."

in my workflow I typically prompt the LLM to carefully consider if the data schema I provided it is not sufficient for whatever task I gave it and to then argue for including additional members, with GPT 5.5 I took notice because of the arguments it provided me, it became clear to me that it's over. they have 130+ IQ. it's just a matter of constructing scaffolds now to have them express the intelligence because due to whatever quirks of training they can do stupid things.

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

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not discounting that other tools are to still be used. My reply is to the OP that was saying that quality gets worse applying an AI by an expert to an AI coded project. Time and place for both I agree.

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

#120

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…

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