this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Well there's the problem.
I'm a software developer and I say that AI is the greatest force-multiplier that's been introduced into the field since the compiler. I love using it, it handles the most tedious and annoying parts of the process. But there are situations I don't want to use it in, and of course being forced to use would give me a more negative opinion of it. Obviously.
I kind of agree it's a multiplier. But so far every time I've had it do something its written such an ugly turd I have to rewire it all taking more time than if I'd just solved the problem to start with. Maybe someday but it's not up to the quality I expect of development.
Have you tried giving it coding standards and other such preferences about how you like your code to be organized? I've found that coding agents can be quite adaptable to various styles, you can put stuff like "try to keep functions less than 100 lines long" or "include assertions validating all function inputs" into your coding agent's general instructions and it'll follow them.
For me, one of the things that's a huge fundamental improvement is telling the agent to create and run unit tests for everything. That way when it does mess up accidentally it can immediately catch the problem and usually fixes it in the same session without further intervention. Unit tests used to be more trouble than they were worth most of the time, now I love them.
After I worked with AI agents a little, I dove in with a big set of coding standards and practices and... I overdid it. I find I get better results by starting off with a "light touch" and letting it do what it wants, then correcting where it gets off track (like using python for something that needs efficient performance...)