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Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

codingwithjesse.com

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Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#171

Post by hamdingers »

sublimefire wrote: post #61
progforlyfe wrote: post #58

This is why I always work at a new company at least 6-12 months before making any major changes. I use that time to get into the flow of how things are being done (even if I think they are not efficient). I may make some suggestions but that's it. Of course, I'll probably never get hired again anywhere so it doesn't matter anymore.

In 6-12 months you could ship a new product or a large feature. This strategy might actually put you on a performance improvement plan instead.

A company/manager that would PIP you during onboarding doesn't understand the craft and does not deserve you.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#172

Post by ryandrake »

conductr wrote: post #100
maerF0x0 wrote: post #35

I've met a handful of people across my life that i'd call truly brilliant. Like, holy heck how in the world is this person this smart? Two things I've noted about really smart people are (usually mutually exclusively) 1) Sometimes they do not realize how smart they are, because it's simple to them, or because they know the subject they assume everyone else, say with a computer science degree, knows and recalls and un…

> Imagine walking through life and everything is clear, obvious, easy to process and having to watch humanity make stupid choices over and over and over again when the answers have been long known... I don’t claim to be book smart or have a high IQ or whatever but I feel this way about small things that I feel are common sense. It’s maddening to me to watch people fumble around. Or do X when obviously it will result…

One of the things I try to teach my kid is: You are going to have to deal with the fact that there are deeply stupid people all around you, without it affecting your mental health. Those stupid people might be in a position of power over you, they might be other kids in school (or coworkers, later), they might be the president of the country, they might be your neighbor, or they might just be obstacles on the road on your way to work every day. You need to learn how to cope and accept this, gracefully deal with them, and how to protect yourself from their stupidity when it might affect you. It's emotional regulation that smart people need to learn or they go crazy.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#174

Post by stevenpetryk »

kaydub wrote: post #144

This is such a low value article lol I'm not even sure what it's trying to say. It's just someone patting themselves on the back.

there is certainly code that sucks; but the article strikes me as someone conflating "code that sucks" with "code that is complex and big and takes a while to get used to".

I have found that a lot of the "massive amounts of bad code" left behind by "rockstar developers" is actually just a long slow drip of added complexity in the face of changing requirements. and I find that people think they're "refactoring the code for readability" when a lot of times, they are actually just "rewriting the code and therefore understanding it in that process".

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#175

Post by kaydub »

robofanatic wrote: post #23

> Half the code was written in a language you didn't understand. The other half was written using libraries you never heard of. > As you waded through the slop, you browsed job postings and fantasized about leaving Just because you didn't understand something or haven't heard about a library, doesn't mean its slop. How do you make sure your definition of "clean code" is not a slop to others?

This is a guy who has 20 years of 1 year of experience. His blog includes his linkedin and github, just give it a look over.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#176

Post by hibbelig »

jdw64 wrote: post #28

If you're just starting to learn programming, people will tell you that maintainability is important, and they'll mention John Ousterhout's concept of the "tactical tornado" as an anti-pattern. The problem is that this approach implements features quickly but in a way that conflicts with the team's mental model, ultimately ruining the entire codebase. A lot of blog posts initially framed this as a problem. I agreed t…

I believe GNU Emacs was created in 1984 or 1985, and it's still going strong. I guess it's not easy to work on it due to the long history, but I understand it's been refactored as the developers went along.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#177

Post by Yokohiii »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #35

I've met a handful of people across my life that i'd call truly brilliant. Like, holy heck how in the world is this person this smart? Two things I've noted about really smart people are (usually mutually exclusively) 1) Sometimes they do not realize how smart they are, because it's simple to them, or because they know the subject they assume everyone else, say with a computer science degree, knows and recalls and un…

> painfully forefront of mind that they're smarter than most everyone around them

Many devs choose to just do their day job or decide to follow a cargo cult.

Probably not every dev can have the same output, but if you decide to keep thinking beyond what is the cultural average, then everyone could be smart in their own way.

Most people don't realize they can do that.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#179

Post by kaydub »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #22

It’s literally no different than how to clean up old projects over the last 30 years of software engineering I don’t understand why all this stuff is all of a sudden “new.” It feels like we’ve got an entire generation of people who never had to spend their time factoring or doing hard infrastructure work It’s actually pretty baffling how rare it is to find somebody who has consistent experience in refactoring that is…

You're just witnessing "Software Developers" cry out over LLMs.

"Software Engineers" are embracing LLMs and getting shit done same as before.

Re: Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers

#180

Post by saalweachter »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #41
DenisM wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways they are giving you a spec and UI mocks to implement.

This is one of the things I keep thinking about. At the very least, these tools make prototyping and idea vetting remarkably cheaper. Then we go back to the old “the prototype works; I’m the boss and I’m telling you to deploy it to production”

There's like three groups of developers you need:

The prototypers, who move fast and break things, who throw together shiny first versions that look great and work some of the time;

The architects, who take the prototypes and take the time to build it correctly;

And the gardeners, who maintain the built system for the next 10-30 years, fixing bugs, making incremental improvements to speed or resource usage, and updating dependencies so that it continues to function on modern machines.

The crazy thing is that there are a ton of developers with different tastes who would love to fill each of the roles, but not many companies that are able to manage all three types without pushing everyone into one bucket.

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