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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

#151

Post by thraway3837 »

midtake wrote: post #136
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 Both have been replaced by "vibe" coding.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"?

No, I really meant that we don't even read the code anymore. In another comment I wrote: we just CMD+Q VS Code and it's not even in the recents/pin to dock, since what's the point? We can see the diffs in the PR and quickly gloss over it and query/prompt/ask clarifications.

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

#153

Post by alanwreath »

ramesh31 wrote: post #80
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?" Probably the hard part; figuring out what the heck to actually build, talking to customers, and figuring out whether it's actually working for people. Nobody cares that your codebase is Clean and SOLID, or uses $whatever_framework of the day with 100% test coverage.

“Maintainability” is probably the word you are really looking for. Few devs care whether something adheres to whatever as long as we maintain:

- user experience/expectation (i.e., if feature X worked three years ago, it still works in a consistent way today after a bug fix) - development cadence (if implementation of feature X took N days, a comparable feature Y should take N days) - sanity (can we assume that a fix going in Thursday night or Friday morning doesn’t wreck the weekend)

SOLID, DRY, ACID-compliant, linted, formatted, clean, functional, compositional, etc. May be the means (misdirected or otherwise) but they are not the motivator(or at least should not be).

What matters is whether the day two feature requests, bug reports, CVEs, and traffic load that are coming can be met on time.

Not saying it can’t be done without a developer at the helm, Anyone Can Cook™, but I guess it depends on what harness is in use or has created for the org, and whether that consideration is baked into the guidelines for the codebase (which seems to be, at least to some extent, what this service tries to course correct).

And of course, what is done to the process when incident x happens, again and again. Are we only updating code without paying attention to process that enabled it in the first place?

Maybe that’s the story of vibe coded repos: the code devs were removed but we really still need devops personnel. Also maybe new tech will be more readily adopted.

Interesting times.

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

#154

Post by tikhonj »

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…

It's interesting how people view software as a distraction and an annoying side quest/cost center, but never apply that to, say, 90% of what management does. None of that "directly" makes money either!

That tells us a lot more about the leadership and management philosophies at modern companies than anything fundamental about what kind of work actually matters.

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

#155

Post by tikhonj »

neitherboosh wrote: post #101
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.

If you have even the remotest mental slop filter, I assume you are not really part of their target market.

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

#156

Post by unknownfuture »

midtake wrote: post #136
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"?

Alas no:

https://smartbear.com/lean/code-review/best-practices-for-pe...

> A SmartBear study of a Cisco Systems programming team revealed that developers should review no more than 200 to 400 lines of code (LOC) at a time. The brain can only effectively process so much information at a time; beyond 400 LOC, the ability to find defects diminishes.

...

> SmartBear research shows a significant drop in defect density at rates faster than 500 LOC per hour. Code reviews in reasonable quantity, at a slower pace for a limited amount of time results in the most effective code review.

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

#157

Post by jrflowers »

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…

> AMA!

I think I missed where you posted what business you work at

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

#158

Post by otterley »

thraway3837 wrote: post #150
kdheiwns wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm happy to provide specifics, within reason, of course. Ask away. I've since responded to comments with more detail, but if I missed something there, let me know!

You keep saying you'll provide specifics, but I haven't seen anything. Instead of saying you'll provide them, actually provide them! Be forthcoming.

This conversation feels like the "disturbance in the kitchen" scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjaHrp6JtyY

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

#159

Post by socratic_weeb »

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…

This industry's complete outsourcing of its core business value on a third party proprietary subscription based tool, Claude, made by an unprofitable company, Anthropic, is very concerning. You are all lunatics, sorry.

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

#160

Post by unknownfuture »

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…

> Our conclusion was that we should not be concerned what search or queuing algorithm or data structure is being used.

Not to be too snide, but if that's your reductionist view of the work of software development, I'm not surprised you're comfortable vibecoding without a human in the loop.

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