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When I reject AI code even if it works

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Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#151

Post by itopaloglu83 »

figassis wrote: post #118
Aurornis wrote: post #10

Even using Fable (while it was briefly available), having it refine a plan, and directing it to make only small incremental changes, I still found reasons to reject its first pass at a lot of work. There was a lot of “You’re right to push back” responses. A lot of incidents where it would creat some giant complex set of abstractions to accomplish something that I could find ways to do much more elegantly and in a mor…

Have nee dealing with this in an area that requires insane attention: payments. It's strange feeling when you architect a system, all the invariants, all the fundamentals, all the guardrails, then implement the scaffolding in self documenting code, so the LLM has no way to build other than correctly, but you then see what it tries to do and it's WTF. It all seems to behave correctly and then you run your test suite,…

In my experience Claude tends to immensely over complicate things and go for a complex abstraction scheme even when all it needs to do is two lines of code. Combined with its eagerness to just code and more importantly pay more attention to the last prompt causes it to do an insanely complex solution first and then patch things with half assed attempts. The whole ordeal results in a code that on an initial glance looks okay, but quickly breaks down and becomes unmanageable. A significant effort is needed to push back Claude’s tendencies, so I mainly find myself pushing back or looking for ways to write an initial prompt with enough guidance, but only Fable was following them properly, Opus simply acts like a rhino in a china shop.

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#152

Post by unknownfuture »

SunboX wrote: post #150
unknownfuture wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with 20+ years of experience as well, can we agree that, if you're doing this for any code that really matters, that this is fundamentally irresponsible and, in some circumstances, unethical? Suppose you were legally liable for your code misbehaving in a way that led to harm. Would you behave differently? And do you do this by choice? Or is this the case of an employer forcing you to vibecoded while skippi…

It depends on. There's of course code that must be deeply checked. And all shades of grey. I guess it needs experience to know when to do what. Regarding to be forced or not... There are many kinds of pressure, features, deadlines... Of course, I learned how to deal with them and when to speak up or not. My boss is paying me the AI abo. He wants to get things done as fast and as good as possible. That's his job. We h…

Do you? Is shipping features faster really going to make or break a business?

I know that's not your call but IME it's simply not true: rarely do products win by simply being faster than their competition at delivering more features to market.

But the AI age has led to a panic among leaders as FOMO has taken over the industry. I can only hope one day that fever breaks.

I'm not optimistic.

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#153

Post by SunboX »

unknownfuture wrote: post #152
SunboX wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on. There's of course code that must be deeply checked. And all shades of grey. I guess it needs experience to know when to do what. Regarding to be forced or not... There are many kinds of pressure, features, deadlines... Of course, I learned how to deal with them and when to speak up or not. My boss is paying me the AI abo. He wants to get things done as fast and as good as possible. That's his job. We h…

Do you? Is shipping features faster really going to make or break a business? I know that's not your call but IME it's simply not true: rarely do products win by simply being faster than their competition at delivering more features to market. But the AI age has led to a panic among leaders as FOMO has taken over the industry. I can only hope one day that fever breaks. I'm not optimistic.

It depends on the marked. When I did the Point-of-Sale software and Couponing stuff, it was not that important. Now I'm in a business, where marketing needs the features to sell consumer products. At least, that's what they tell all. So we have to deliver.

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#154

Post by unknownfuture »

SunboX wrote: post #153
unknownfuture wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you? Is shipping features faster really going to make or break a business? I know that's not your call but IME it's simply not true: rarely do products win by simply being faster than their competition at delivering more features to market. But the AI age has led to a panic among leaders as FOMO has taken over the industry. I can only hope one day that fever breaks. I'm not optimistic.

It depends on the marked. When I did the Point-of-Sale software and Couponing stuff, it was not that important. Now I'm in a business, where marketing needs the features to sell consumer products. At least, that's what they tell all. So we have to deliver.

Yeah that's just the FOMO I'm talking about. Frankly, if your product is driven primarily by marketing you're already screwed.

Anyway, we're in this sh.t together so stay strong, keep your head up, and try not to compromise your ethics. The industry is seriously f.cked right now and it's going to be a rough ride for a while...

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#155

Post by fatata123 »

darkerside wrote: post #33
Aurornis wrote: post #10

Even using Fable (while it was briefly available), having it refine a plan, and directing it to make only small incremental changes, I still found reasons to reject its first pass at a lot of work. There was a lot of “You’re right to push back” responses. A lot of incidents where it would creat some giant complex set of abstractions to accomplish something that I could find ways to do much more elegantly and in a mor…

In fairness, you could throw the most senior engineer into a brand new codebase, and they would probably make a dozen mistakes if you immediately had them pick up invasive and risky work.

[dead]

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#156

Post by ffsm8 »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #130
ffsm8 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's mind-blowing to me is that people see the "you're right to push back" as anything besides hallucination / self affirmation Dude, the fucking model is great for sure, but there is nothing behind the illusion. It doesn't know if something is right or wrong - simpler or harder to reason about etc It's just generating text, in a coherent manner while following rhetoric processes as a solid attempt at logical think…

How does it correct itself then? I often will push back without giving it the way out and it often does find it

If you're fantasy was real, then how can you also have it correct itself from a passable solution to a dumbsterfire?

That fundamentally wouldn't happen if it wasn't just an illusion.

There is value in it for sure and I can use it to write a lot of simple code, which is 99.99% of enterprise software - but that's another topic.

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#157

Post by vnbrs »

mdavid626 wrote: post #140

The problem is if your coworkers don’t do it this way.

That’s why I think code reviews should be human first. That’s where we get the most value out of it. AI code reviews are still good though, but they should be treated as linters in your CI pipeline.

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#158

Post by matltc »

Aurornis wrote: post #10

Even using Fable (while it was briefly available), having it refine a plan, and directing it to make only small incremental changes, I still found reasons to reject its first pass at a lot of work. There was a lot of “You’re right to push back” responses. A lot of incidents where it would creat some giant complex set of abstractions to accomplish something that I could find ways to do much more elegantly and in a mor…

> the scary middle

Not coworkers, but I started getting contributions on public GitHub repos that attempted to close issues tagged with the default "good first issue" label. Got real excited when one project I'm stoked for got its first contribution, until I looked at the PR. The account it was tied to was someone looking for work. Looked like what a model would output for a LinkedIn Job seeker NPC--im sure you can imagine.

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#159

Post by figassis »

figassis wrote: post #118
Aurornis wrote: post #10

Even using Fable (while it was briefly available), having it refine a plan, and directing it to make only small incremental changes, I still found reasons to reject its first pass at a lot of work. There was a lot of “You’re right to push back” responses. A lot of incidents where it would creat some giant complex set of abstractions to accomplish something that I could find ways to do much more elegantly and in a mor…

Have nee dealing with this in an area that requires insane attention: payments. It's strange feeling when you architect a system, all the invariants, all the fundamentals, all the guardrails, then implement the scaffolding in self documenting code, so the LLM has no way to build other than correctly, but you then see what it tries to do and it's WTF. It all seems to behave correctly and then you run your test suite,…

btw sorry for the typos, just re-read this and looks like a dyslexic person wrote it

Re: When I reject AI code even if it works

#160

Post by vikramkr »

mkozlows wrote: post #45
ecshafer wrote: post #13

If we rephrased this to "When I reject my coworkers code even if it works" and give the same reasons there would be zero dissent. There is this weird idea that seems to come up with AI that any solution must be good and adequate. Software Engineering is all about rejecting code that works for the right code that works.

Yeah, but I think there's a difference here: If your coworker puts up code that you don't understand quickly, in most environments people give it an approval, as withholding approval is meant to indicate that there's a problem with the code. It's very rare that you'd actually force them to wait to merge until they've explained the code to your satisfaction. (There are workplaces where that's the norm, I know -- it te…

That sounds like you're just creating an artificial distinction. If you let other engineers merge their code without looking at it too closely nothing makes the AI any different other than pretending it's "your code" even though it's a git commit full of code you didn't write. At that point you're dealing with functionally a junior engineer's code and if you don't have a culture of good code review etc, that's an issue and maybe you shouldn't be using full agentic coding? You're taking a team of people with no practice in doing code review and making that their entire job - that's not going to end well and just saying "it's _your code_" is basically asserting a fantasy and hoping it works out. If you didn't write the code, it's not your code!
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