this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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Programming

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What We Lost the Last Time Code Got Cheap (www.poppastring.com)
submitted 5 days ago by codeinabox@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] sobchak@programming.dev 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Meh, disagree with a lot of this.

AI tools can generate functional, adequate, perfectly average code

Not in my experience.

The outsourcing era taught us that the expensive part of software was never writing it. It was understanding it well enough to change it safely, to debug it under pressure, to explain to the next person why a particular decision was made at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday.

Since AI is adequate, just have AI change, debug, and explain it. You don't even need devs running the AI. Have AI generate intent. Just have AI scrape Twitter for people complaining about applications they wish existed, and have the AI make them. Let AI do market research. It's supposedly perfectly adequate.

[–] thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz 6 points 4 days ago

Just have AI scrape Twitter for people complaining about applications they wish existed, and have the AI make them.

I mean... in 2026, this is probably a viable business strategy tbh.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

'Well if it's merely okay just have it be perfect.'

Unserious.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

Its perfectly adequate generating simple scripts if you know what it's doing or complex programs IF.you have a "harness" which is to say tones of well defined scopes, design docs, coding guidelines, and a dev and test environment with written and automatic unit and integration tests.

Basically every devs wish lists. You get adequate complex coding results.