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AI is forcing us to write good code

bits.logic.inc

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Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#131

Post by andrewchambers »

sublinear wrote: post #78

What? We're already so far down the list of things to try with AI that we're saying hallucinated tests are better than no tests at all? Seems actively harmful, and the AI hype died out faster than I thought it would. > Agents will happily be the Roomba that rolls over dog poop and drags it all over your house There it is, folks!

Where did it say the tests need to be hallucinated ?

If you can make good tests the AI shouldn't be able to cheat them. It will either churn forever or pass them.

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#132

Post by [deleted] »

tempodox wrote: post #125

This is hallucination. Or maybe a sales pitch. If production bugs and the requirement to retain a workable code base don’t get us to write “good” code, then nothing will. And at the current state of the art, “AI” will tend to make it worse.

[deleted]

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#133

Post by phplovesong »

LOL No. AI code i see is 90% really bad. The poster then snakes around the first commenter that asks "how much of the code was generated by AI?"

Replies vary from silence to "ill checked all the code" or "ai code is better than human code" or even "ai was not used at all", even it is obvious it was 100% AI.

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#134

Post by KurSix »

There's a catch with 100% coverage. If the agent writes both the code and the tests, we risk falling into a tautology trap. The agent can write flawed logic and a test that verifies that flawed logic (which will pass). 100% coverage only makes sense if tests are written before the code or rigorously verified by a human. Otherwise, we're just creating an illusion of reliability by covering hallucinations with tests. An "executable example" is only useful if it's semantically correct, not just syntactically

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#135

Post by maeln »

phplovesong wrote: post #133

LOL No. AI code i see is 90% really bad. The poster then snakes around the first commenter that asks "how much of the code was generated by AI?" Replies vary from silence to "ill checked all the code" or "ai code is better than human code" or even "ai was not used at all", even it is obvious it was 100% AI.

You did not read the article did you

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#136

Post by victorbjorklund »

This is something I have seen. The code I write on projects I work on alone is a lot better today vs in the past because AI works better on a repo with good code quality. This can be writing smaller modules or even breaking out an API integration into its own library (something I seldom would do in the past).

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#137

Post by KurSix »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #119

This is exactly how I've been working with AI this year and I highly recommend it. This kind of workflow was not feasible when I was working alone and typing every line of code. Now it's suprisingly easy to achieve. In my latest project, I've enforced extremely strict linting rules and completely banned any ignore comments. No file over 500 lines, and I'm even using all the default settings to prevent complex functio…

Sounds like a dream, but there is a risk of a local maximum here. Strict linters and small files are great at helping the agent write syntactically correct code, but they don't guarantee architectural correctness. An agent can generate 100 perfect 500-line files that together form an unmaintainable dependency hell. A linter catches bad code, not bad system design. Leaving an agent unsupervised for 2 hours is bold because refactoring architectural mistakes is harder than fixing typos

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#138

Post by KurSix »

SoKamil wrote: post #43
jaredcwhite wrote: post #17

I'm sad programmers lacking a lot of experience will read this and think it's a solid run-down of good ideas.

I’m more afraid that some manager will read this and impose rules on their team. On the surface one might think that having more test coverage is universally good and won’t consider trade offs. I have a gut feeling that Goodhart’s Law accelerated with AI is a dangerous mix.

Goodhart's Law works on steroids with AI. If you tell a human dev "we need 100% coverage," they might write a few dummy tests, but they'll feel shame. AI feels no shame - it has a loss function. If the metric is "lines covered" rather than "invariants checked," the agent will flood the project with meaningless tests faster than a manager can blink. We'll end up with a perfectly green CI/CD dashboard and a completely broken production because the tests will verify tautologies, not business logic

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#139

Post by cess11 »

I kind of feel that if you weren't doing this and start doing it to please a bunch of chatbots, then you're sending a pretty weird signal to your coworkers or employees. Like you care more about the bots than the people you work with.

Other than that, sure, good advice. If at all possible you should have watch -n 2 run_tests or test run on a file watcher on a screen while coding.

In my experience LLM:s like to add assertions and tests for impossible states, which is quite irritating, so I'd rather not do the agentic vibe thing anyway.

Re: AI is forcing us to write good code

#140

Post by notimetorelax »

KurSix wrote: post #134

There's a catch with 100% coverage. If the agent writes both the code and the tests, we risk falling into a tautology trap. The agent can write flawed logic and a test that verifies that flawed logic (which will pass). 100% coverage only makes sense if tests are written before the code or rigorously verified by a human. Otherwise, we're just creating an illusion of reliability by covering hallucinations with tests. A…

You’re right. What I like doing in those cases is to review very closely the tests and the assertions. Frequently it’s even faster than looking at the SUT itself.
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