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AI Agents and the Refactoring That Never Happens

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Re: AI Agents and the Refactoring That Never Happens

#71
The very first thing I do on a Greenfield project or when taking on an existing codebase is implement strict LoC rules in CI/linters. Anything over 800 lines gets a line freeze.

Anything over 600 lines is considered for a refactor when it's touched if appropriate, anything over 800 lines must be refactored when touched. (Combination of AGENTS.md and custom lint warnings/errors).

Anything over 1000 lines forms the refactoring backlog. This way, the bleeding stops immediately and a lot of debt that would otherwise sit in a refactoring backlog forever gets chipped away at over time. The debt that doesn't get chipped is code that isn't touched often anyway and has been battle tested, so might as well be left alone.

Re: AI Agents and the Refactoring That Never Happens

#72
post #39

This is obviously written by an LLM. Should we flag such content?

Did I even tried to pretend the article wasn't generated with Claude's help? I even shared the initial prompt in some comment in this thread. I don't understand what is the matter with also using AI help with generating articles. I still reviewed the article and put all the ideas I wanted to discuss in that article. I don't see why people are often complaining about this. The article content is much more important th…

I hear your frustration and it, er, prompted me to write some thoughts about the situation.

The community is trending strongly against wanting to read generated writing. It's unclear how it will shake out in the long run, but for the near term, this preference is clear*. We can debate the reasons or what the correct position is, but it doesn't much matter when there's such a strong community verdict.

We don't have a rule against genai in articles the way we do about text appearing on HN itself (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated) but the pushback is strong enough that it's in authors' interest to write their articles themselves. Even seemingly less invasive tools like grammar checkers and translators leave strong LLM imprints on text these days.

There is an emerging class distinction in the culture: generated writing, or writing that sounds like it, gets stigmatized and relegated to a lower-status bucket in readers' minds. The converse is also true: writing that isn't generated, and doesn't sound like it, gets boosted into a high-status bucket. It's easy enough to turn this to one's advantage: simply write your own writing.

There are even signs that mistakes (e.g. in grammar or spelling) which would formerly have counted against an author and lowered their status, are turning into markers of authenticity. This is something we point out to non-native English speakers who post to HN: don't worry about your English, just write in your own voice, because that is the high-order bit now. (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...)

I think your prompt was great, btw (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49544844) and something most readers, including myself, would prefer to the generated output. Kudos for sharing it! We often hear readers saying they'd "rather see the prompt", but yours may be the first case I've seen of an author actually posting it.

* We've been keeping an ad hoc list of these reactions to illustrate the point: https://news.ycombinator.com/genai-pushback

Re: AI Agents and the Refactoring That Never Happens

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why believe it's worth your time? Upfront it reads like: > Claude, generate a 500 word blog post about how people don't refactor anymore because of AI. Just send me the prompt!

The prompt was actually huge, containing all the central ideas of the articles in details. I actually found my first prompt in case you're curious: --- Human contexts are way more limited compared to computers. We can't reason about complex software when they go through many branches with so many implications. It's just too hard for humans to keep track of all interconnected pieces. So humans have historically split…

This is much better than the AI version, just post this next time

Re: AI Agents and the Refactoring That Never Happens

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why believe it's worth your time? Upfront it reads like: > Claude, generate a 500 word blog post about how people don't refactor anymore because of AI. Just send me the prompt!

The prompt was actually huge, containing all the central ideas of the articles in details. I actually found my first prompt in case you're curious: --- Human contexts are way more limited compared to computers. We can't reason about complex software when they go through many branches with so many implications. It's just too hard for humans to keep track of all interconnected pieces. So humans have historically split…

Thank you, I appreciate you sharing this very much! I wish I could read the entire chat, but I imagine there might be some NDA stuff in there if you talk abt real world experiences.
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