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Write code like a human will maintain it

unstack.io

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Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#61

Post by conception »

ebiester wrote: post #51
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #29

Write yourself a /review command. That is an empty markdown file at `.claude/commands/review.md`. In it, put a checklist of things the agent should look for. When you’re ready to have your agent review the code, type `/review`. The checklist will be examined and it’ll plan out some findings to ask you if you want them fixed. Mine starts with “Enter plan mode. Examine the differences on this branch vs. main. Consider:…

You should do an experiment of splitting that up to multiple reviews that are logically together. My hypothesis is that you may be losing signal due to the amount of text expected back.

Or a dynamic workflow. $$$ but lots of coverage.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#62

Post by throwaw12 »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #29

Write yourself a /review command. That is an empty markdown file at `.claude/commands/review.md`. In it, put a checklist of things the agent should look for. When you’re ready to have your agent review the code, type `/review`. The checklist will be examined and it’ll plan out some findings to ask you if you want them fixed. Mine starts with “Enter plan mode. Examine the differences on this branch vs. main. Consider:…

Can you share your list?

I am curious what does it contain, for me a lot of times its a back and forth with agent until it "looks good to my eyes and taste", but haven't written any such list yet, because it is context dependant, in some projects I forgive minor issues, or allow magical numbers, but in other projects I force agent to use constants with meaningful names `SECONDS_IN_A_DAY = 24 * 60 * 60`

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#63

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jraph wrote: post #58
saghm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the proportion of code that drives homicidal behavior is heavily weighted towards non-comments. You're a lot more likely to piss off whoever inherits your code with the code that actually does something being bad or a lack of documentation than with comments.

I'm quite fine with no comments but correctly named variables and functions. This can't become out of sync contrarily to "out of band" comments. I take this over commented code with poorly named stuff any day. I've also seen a lot of comments that restate what the code already says and that's just noise, more work to keep in sync, an additional thing that can fail, and more cognitive load because you have to read twi…

I worked with this guy. He'd write the code, and comment where needed, and then he would ask "How can I make this comment unnecessary?" The answer was usually to rename something, so that what he was doing was obvious.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#64

Post by planb »

I have good results with this prompt after every larger change: Now do a final code check. Is everything tidy and do the components adhere to the principle of separations-of-concerns. Is everything in an understandable and maintainable state? Do we make any assumptions that may not be true anymore? Is any code left over from previous edits or experiments that does not belong into the codebase? Is the documentation still representing the current state of code?

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#65

Post by javier123454321 »

schnebbau wrote: post #50
embedding-shape wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds like a good idea, but shipping 10x as many features and bugfixes sounds better. This work great until you reach a certain size, then good (or even "not bad") code is required otherwise the model spins its wheel trying to ensure the change is correct. The way I've measured how good/bad the code is (for AI) is to have one "baseline fixed change" that I measure how long time it takes to implement. Always i…

Yes, this resonates. I have noticed things slow down over time. But fortunately my app will never grow that big so I don't think it will be an issue. The solution, as you say, is probably to break it down into isolated sub-components that are only aware of each other's APIs and nothing more.

Yeah, for personal software, enterprise practices don't make sense.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#67

Post by jraph »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63
jraph wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite fine with no comments but correctly named variables and functions. This can't become out of sync contrarily to "out of band" comments. I take this over commented code with poorly named stuff any day. I've also seen a lot of comments that restate what the code already says and that's just noise, more work to keep in sync, an additional thing that can fail, and more cognitive load because you have to read twi…

I worked with this guy. He'd write the code, and comment where needed, and then he would ask "How can I make this comment unnecessary?" The answer was usually to rename something, so that what he was doing was obvious.

Nice, I love this. That's pretty satisfying.

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#68

Post by javier123454321 »

swatcoder wrote: post #59
schnebbau wrote: post #7

That sounds like a good idea, but shipping 10x as many features and bugfixes sounds better. I started using AI with the best intentions. Checking everything before committing. Improving output by hand if it didn't quite follow the existing code style guidelines or variables were not named as well as they should be. Or if it did something sloppy or hacky. Now, AI GOES BURRRRRRRRRRRR! If the tests pass it's good to shi…

> shipping 10x as many features and bugfixes sounds better I understand you're excited about the tool, but for the sake of earnest discussion here, maybe commenters like yourself can tone the hype down to plausibility? Claims like this are just nonsense. It's not how product development works. How do you even have so many bugs left to fix if the tool is so fast and productive? Surely, you didn't have a backlog of ten…

OP is making toys, not enterprise software

Re: Write code like a human will maintain it

#69

Post by kreco »

Invictus0 wrote: post #4

[flagged]

AI is trained on a various range of code quality, including very low one.

I'm paid to provide good quality code and not flood my company with more average code than it should.

In my previous job, I could regularly reduce a PR code down to 10-20%% of its size because someone overlooked something or was just "overengineer" a feature.

AI are such "bullshiters" that they produce more text than necessary.

Code bloat was already real, but from my personal experience it becomes realer with AI. The outcome of this will likely be apparent when no one can dive into any code base because of the amount of fluff in it (and you will obviously need more AI to deal with this).

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