Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

odra.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 263 posts

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

#131

Post by ncallaway »

llm_nerd wrote: post #40
martin1975 wrote: post #35

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…

> courtesy of modularization, separation of concerns, explicit APIs, and so on.

That's great, but a lot of that is knowledge you have to bring in. You need to be careful with the design of the API boundaries, the interfaces, etc.

Lots of people who are using AI to code projects... don't do that.

And once you get to the point that the AI is having trouble keeping up with the project... it's going to take a lot of work to discover what those module boundaries and interfaces should be.

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

#132

Post by thraway3837 »

blanched wrote: post #113
thraway3837 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No worries at all, I took your question in good faith :)

I also responded below re: Vibe coding.

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

#133

Post by thraway3837 »

blanched wrote: post #57
kevin42 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be clear, I didn't mean this as an anti-AI gotcha. They also said: > We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback So maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like the design was external (and based on an existing product to begin with). Also, my understanding was that "vibe coding" meant more of "make it do X" as opposed to "here's a design for X, implement it."

Sorry, I was trying to be glib by putting "vibe" in quotes, because I think that term is used for people who have zero experience in software engineering, but when used by senior engineers, it's something else. But, I don't know if some populations would still call it vibe coding.

The design is external in that the requirements come from external customers or internal customers (since these applications) are used by both. We're not trying to duplicate or replicate any existing system, but I can't confidently say that I'm not drawing from any prior art.

Hope that makes sense.

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

#134

Post by blanched »

phil21 wrote: post #121
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?

> So what do you / your team do? This is so funny to me, because I know it's asked in earnest but seems so obvious to me: They get actual work done. Programming isn't work. That's just a means to an end. A tool to get the actual job done. At least in most orgs. Obviously there are exceptions - but the vast economy is not a bunch of software companies. It's companies doing things to build a physical product, and softw…

I think programming is work, but I get your point :). And yes, of course - I'm mostly just curious how peoples roles at various companies are evolving as they hand off more and more to AI.

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

#135

Post by dymk »

Cyberdog wrote: post #34
OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NGL I'd argue there's a certain appeal to "use AI to prototype a feature as fast as possible and focus your engineer hours on building a comprehensive testing and fuzzing plan" followed by a "remove and review everything that can be cut without breaking the tests" cleanup pass.

The “cleanup pass” never happens, though. It’ll just be new feature on top of new feature until it’s too large to refactor.

You're describing a problem that's plagued corporate software development for decades. You just get to the "unmaintainable ball of mud" stage faster now. Every few days I spent a while on codebase architecture improvements after landing a slew of features.

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

#136

Post by midtake »

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 have senior engineers review the actual functionality and none of them have read any more than a few lines of code.

A senior engineer should be able to efficiently read thousands of lines of code per day. Maybe this is what you meant by "a few"?

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

#137

Post by adam_arthur »

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”.

The level of "slop" produced by AI is a direct function of skill of the developer and broadness of the prompts.

Broad prompts by unskilled users results in a complete mess. Targeted prompts by a skilled person reviewing the code produces something better.

Quality of application varies widely, and generally agree with the categories mentioned by the sibling post.

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

#138

Post by llm_nerd »

rustystump wrote: post #81
llm_nerd wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Ahh yes the “you’re holding it wrong defense”. Now i ask what enormous extremely complicated projects…excuse me by projects we mean real production software with real scale. Sure, it can poke one system or another but even with opus and now fable, it very quickly hits the limit a limit that tracks very closely with context window. This is to say that no amount of harness tool skill is going to cover that fundamental…

> Ahh yes the “you’re holding it wrong defense”

Tools have limitations and ideal uses. If you hammer a nail with a chisel, you're probably going to have a bad time. If you build a home and don't level the joists and studs, you're going to have a bad time. If you use an impact wrench on the wrong part you can cause enormous damage. And so on.

Yes, "holding it wrong" is a legitimate thing people can discuss. Similarly it's funny how often people want to talk about "vibe coding", when that is quite simply the opposite of what I am advocating, but it has become a fun slur.

> Now i ask what enormous extremely complicated projects…excuse me by projects we mean real production software with real scale

Every large project on the planet is using AI tooling now, so this sort of gatekeeping has gotten almost sad. Like there's another guy in here leaving some worthless troll comment and they literally created an account on here four months ago purely to run around shrieking and telling everyone that AI is useless and it's all a myth. The desperation is palpable.

Good large projects generally are the combination of hundreds to thousands of small, fairly defined and isolated sub-projects and modules and contained classes with well-defined entry-points, and so on. Using AI on projects like that, where the non-vibe developing, skilled developer is asking for concrete, audited changes on those modules, is hugely useful. It's far more of a crap shoot if you don't understand your own code base and broadly demand that it make cross-cutting changes.

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

#139

Post by sorenjan »

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…

- What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the prompt engineers?

- Yes, yes that's right.

- Well then I just have to ask why can't the customers take them directly to the vibe coding software people?

- Well, I'll tell you why... because... engineers are not good at dealing with customers...

- So you physically take the specs from the customer?

- Well... No. My secretary does that... or they're faxed.

- So then you must physically bring them to the software people?

- Well... No. ah sometimes.

- What would you say you do here?

- Look I already told you, I deal with the @#$% customers so the prompt engineers don't have to. I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people, can't you understand that? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!

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

#140

Post by blanched »

thraway3837 wrote: post #133
blanched wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I didn't mean this as an anti-AI gotcha. They also said: > We get feature requests, improvements, ideas, feedback So maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like the design was external (and based on an existing product to begin with). Also, my understanding was that "vibe coding" meant more of "make it do X" as opposed to "here's a design for X, implement it."

Sorry, I was trying to be glib by putting "vibe" in quotes, because I think that term is used for people who have zero experience in software engineering, but when used by senior engineers, it's something else. But, I don't know if some populations would still call it vibe coding. The design is external in that the requirements come from external customers or internal customers (since these applications) are used by…

Makes sense! My mistake for assuming it was the former definition, lesson learned.

Hopefully soon our industry will align on some standard terms. I feel like "AI-assisted", "agentic coding", "vibe coding", etc each have a few different meanings already.

Post reply on HN