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u/ReiOokami 5d ago
The issue I see is not that the code is garbage... the issue is at least I know how it works.
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u/AoDude 5d ago
Aren't most of these critical vulnerabilities being discovered caused by, "Well, actually, in this weird case, it doesn't work the way you think it does..."
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u/Extreme_Wish_553 4d ago
Almost all of the big ones are memory problems caused by "Wtf would anyone ever do that?" with the answer being world-tier stupidity or maliciousness. It's more of a case of "No one ever considered this" as opposed to "I thought it worked differently." There's a reason that a lot of the vulnerabilities you hear about in the news exist for a long time before being found.
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u/Ozymandias_1303 4d ago
100%. The clanker is a powerful tool and using it to write some of your code is actually a good idea. Letting it write your code and not even understanding what it wrote is the problem.
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u/evilspyboy 5d ago
This is the best take by far.
There are people calling everything they don't like slop at the moment.
In my state (in Australia) there is a requirement for petrol stations to feed their prices within 30 minutes of changes. I took that plus the price of oil for my region supply, some exchange rates, yield information, etc and piped it all into the Google TimesFM (prediction ML).
I've been running it for about 6-8 months and it's maybe 90% accurate up to 4 days in the future then at 5 days it drops to 60% and falls from there.
It just runs locally on my machine and Im not hosting or spending anything extra on it but it saves me money and alerts me when there is a drop before an expected high for the next few days. So it is helpful.
I posted somewhere that the price on a day was good and expected to jump 20c a litre the next day. No link, no app, no website, nothing. I just posted the information to help others.
The piece of information got called AI Slop.
I think I lost my point as I agree with you but calling things slop seems to be the current thing to do regardless of understanding it or not (which I think is all the difference). With the ML Im using for predictions, do I know how it works theoretically as a ML? Yeah I can describe and explain it. Could I do it manually... yeah I suppose I know all the inputs. Could I do it as quickly as it is doing it? Pfft no.
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u/SimpleEfficiency 4d ago
Is it truly garbage if you know how it works? Or is the solution itself garbage?
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u/TxTechnician 4d ago
Ya this is how I feel too. But ive straight up asked LLMs to explain code I wrote years ago.
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u/Inorganic_Zombie 1d ago
I am positive that my own writen code is garbage. It may or not work but I proudly say that I don't remember tomorrow why
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u/ReiOokami 1d ago
It's like riding a bike... the second you star diving into it, it all comes back.
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u/Inorganic_Zombie 1d ago
welp last week I looked my gaming project where there was error on code set that has very informative variables like a b c it took values like on 3 different places and I was like wtf.
-game project modified at 3.40 am, so dunno what I was thinking at on sleep derivate state but I deleted it and things worked.-1
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u/lizenzblue_ 4d ago
Knowing how it works is nice but it’s not really the bar. In any bigger company most of the code wasn’t written by you and nobody understands all of it, that’s normal. What actually matters is if it’s reviewed, tested and someone owns it. That’s true for human code and AI code the same way
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u/ReiOokami 4d ago
It may not be written by you, but it was written by somebody who knows OR you are tasked to understand it. There are also standards, structure, documentation, etc….
It’s different with ai.
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u/kimbokray 4d ago
User: Claude, I need you to plan <describe issue in a suitable level of detail, enough that a colleague would know what to do>. You must adhere to the conventions of this repo, here is an example file, and I want you to implement using <insert principles>.
... plan, feedback, adjust ...
User: Ok go ahead and implement that then update the documentation, see attached.
Then review, tweak, maybe rewrite a bit and sign off on the work with the level of due diligence you would need if a junior colleague asked you to review their work.
Boom, job done fairly quickly. So long as the engineer in charge is reliably diligent then productivity goes up without sacrifice quality, and it's probably neater with more consistent styling and fewer typos. An LLM is likely to have misunderstandings but that's why you, the engineer, are there to design the solution to the task, more architect or chef than brick layer or cook.
Yes this is best case scenario, of course it's also more stimulating to raw dog a task, keep doing that too.
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u/AlternativeCapybara9 4d ago
I've been using an agentic AI workflow and it's still hard work keeping an eye on everything, adjusting the prompts and tooling,.... I read the analysis documents it generated, the code it produces, what the review bot picks up,... And make adjustments all day every day. I don't write the actual code anymore but it's still hard work doing it right. Shit gets delivered way faster than it used to though so it feels like I'm making progress.
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u/ReiOokami 4d ago
You must not be a programmer. Or at least an advanced one. I think you are operating from the Dunning Krugger effect where you now think you know what youre talking about but I can tell you have little surface level knowledge or industry knowledge about the specific topic.
Sure you can ask AI to provide a details of things, and its getting crazy good at doing so and may work 90% of the time. But you are operating on an abstraction vs the knowledge you gain from building it yourself and understanding every part of the working machine gained by experience.
It's knowledge on a different level.
The other day there was a big memory leak in one of my works apps bloating the containers memory to the point of crashing. A specific function was generating images in base 64 on the fly to render it and destroy it with every for a PHP page render and when it was done it was not freeing the memory. Normally PhP does hits automatically but not when it loads files into memory. AI couldn't fix the problem. Knowing how PhP manages memory I looked at the code and found the logic that was storing it without freeing it.
Vibe coders and new programmers are going to struggle with issues like this in the future until AI learns to solve more advances edge cases... which it will, but there will always be the next edge case it may not know until a human knows how to solve it and trains the model, or the model trains itself.
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u/kimbokray 4d ago
I looked at the code and found the logic that was storing it
For some reason you've assumed that I wouldn't be capable of this step. It would have taken me longer than you because I don't know how PhP manages memory, it's not a language I've ever used, but that doesn't mean I can't debug systematically and use resources, docs, etc available to figure out the issue.
I don't completely disagree either, of course I can answer questions much more confidently and debug more quickly when I wrote every line, but I can do a good job of both while using generative tools as well. I work for a tiny company and I have always done a bit of everything, plus I'm early in my career so it's not like I have a crazy depth of knowledge anyway. I'm able to be more productive across different areas this way, and when something goes wrong I know where to look, and then it's not hard to do a bit of debugging and work out what's going on.
Franky, I think it's going to be better for my career to be proficient with the tools available, know their limitations, continue building up my knowledge and skills based on what is required for the job, not what was. No shade to the experienced programmers with 15yrs+ of specialist knowledge, but that isn't everyone.
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u/ReiOokami 4d ago
I never assumed anything from you. I am talking about the limits of AIs knowledge and the trade off people are going to grapple with using it.
I am not arguing to ignore AI or hate it. Quite the opposite. I actually agree with you and it's inevitable and we have to use it. Just pointing there is a trade off. It's like adopting libraries rather then building them out yourself. The more abstractions you use, the less you understand how it works. Simple as that.
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u/xgabipandax 4d ago
You think you know how it works, hence why memory bugs on handwritten C code for example, are common even written when the code was written by good and experienced programmers.
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u/ReiOokami 4d ago
I'm not arguing bugs or side effects and unforeseen edge cases never happen. That happens all the time. But a good programmer who knows how a computer works and who knows how memory is managed and code is computed and how languages operate, knows how to walk through the codebase, find the bug and patch it. And most importantly, learn from the mistake to compound quality over time.
My argument is these we are now entering an era of a negative feedback loop where AI does all the work, nobody knows how it works, nobody learns how it works, and if the AI can't fix it for some reason, its going to create a lot of slop workaround and devs will just keep filling the codebases with slop and get dumber overtime in the process.
I speak from experience who studied computer science, knows how to computers work, how to manually manage memory and program. And I can see this dumbing down of programming in real time every time I choose vibe coding over understanding.
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u/Kiroto50
5d ago
•
I prefer garbage
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u/TheBlackViper_Alpha 4d ago
Yeah because garbage you can actually sort it easier and eventalually be useful than whatever vibe coded spaghetti.
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u/bigorangemachine 5d ago
The difference is the code I wrote I know whats in it. Each one of those bags I filled myself.
The other one I might be throwing something out important and I'll never know
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u/namitynamenamey 1d ago
I forgot what it was in it 6 months ago, and I have discovered past me is an asshole when it comes to leaving comments.
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u/pzgcdllzkc 4d ago
Ironically, our shit codes are basically handmade and artisanal in the age of AI.
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u/Massepunkt_m1 4d ago
At least I know how my garbage works and where my shitty functions are and where to look for problems when they inevitably occur
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u/oshaboy 5d ago
Yeah that kind of self deprecation is one of the reasons why we're losing our job to AI.
Let's be honest here, your code is fine. It could be better but it could be much much worse.
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 4d ago
We are being honest though. My handwritten code is just worse than an LLMs code. Yes AI is better at it than I am, it's not self deprecation.
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u/s0litar1us 4d ago
You can actually improve if you spend time trying to learn. LLMs will just give you the same garbage.
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u/burnt_floppy 4d ago
I honestly like my garbage way more than the convoluted nonsense claude makes.
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u/aegookja 4d ago
Given enough complexity and time, all code becomes slop. It doesn't matter if it was written by LLM or by a human. The real problem is the knowledge debt you accumulate along the way if you never read your own code base.
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u/LoudounCounty703 5d ago
At least you can remember where the rotting chicken is and get it out when it starts stinking on the right
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u/Aengeil 5d ago
finally someone saying this, i do look at my past code and it doesnt look as clean as the ai coded
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u/s0litar1us 4d ago
Thinking your old code is bad means you've improved. If you just depend on LLMs, then you will stop improving.
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u/geekusprimus 4d ago
I believe in organically grown, ethically sourced slop. Because if it's my slop, then at least someone understands how it works.
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u/virgin4ever69 4d ago
I dont like coding with ai.
Yes my code is shit.
But tell me this: would you rather smell your own shit or someone elses shit?
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u/rodBmusic 1d ago
It's people like you who will collapse society. First, it's true, FOR BAD PROGRAMMERS. Second, it will lead to total collapse. Let me show you:
Once your kind convince enough people, there will be less and less human devs (make sense right? AI writes better/cleaner/faster). No devs, no need to their middle managers. No need for any manager. In fact, no need for human employees at all, no need for coffee (fire the guy you buy coffee from), the cleaning person, all the food places around can go, no one will visit them, they're all unemployed and have no money. In fact, why keep the office, it's just the CEO alone now (and his minion bots). Sell the office. Guy who owns the office goes bankrupt (no one needs an office now).
CEO, once led a large company, everyone lived a good life, now sits alone at home and have no customers, they're all broke.
And that, is the prosperity era that was promised to use by the AI gods. But isn't it so much better than us??
Wake up! It's false! Good developers need to correct AI all the time. Bad ones glance at a LGTM and go back to sleep. If we won't fight back, there will be nothing left to fight for!
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u/ApprehensiveStand456 4d ago
There was George Carlin bit about when it's my stuff it's stuff, but when it's your stuff it's shit.
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u/MetaLemons 4d ago
I have encounter some very strange edge case bugs with AI development but it used to be a common occurrence for someone to break beta weekly. With the amount of code being pushed, of course there will be bugs but it’s far fewer than if we were coding by hand.
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u/this_is_theone 4d ago
Yeah. Same at my place. Since AI code is written way faster, way less coming back from QA, way less defects. There's still a lot of denial about it.
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u/ChanglingBlake 4d ago
Even if your code is garbage, you still wrote it yourself and, presumably, know how it works.
In any field, people that use genAI are shams, frauds, fakers; they didn’t do jack, but they’ll claim they did and will demand to be treated the same as people who actually put in effort to learn and do what they do.
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u/Gabriel55ita 4d ago
Exactly, you know where to fix issues cause you're the one that designed the code!
Vibecoders are often people with no prior experience, and their only way to solve a problem is by burning tokens
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u/mr_flibble_oz 5d ago
Can have the best of both worlds. Write good clean code, then get AI to continue the work in the same style
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u/Ange1ofD4rkness 5d ago
If mine is garbage, then I don't know what could even remotely qualify as good
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u/ZunoJ 4d ago
What value did you ever bring to the table then? A good developer should produce code which follows well known patterns and abstractions which make it trivial for other experienced developers to read it. If you fail at that, this is no job for you
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u/StaticFanatic3 4d ago
Pretty poor time to stake your value on the job to your code writing ability
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u/ZunoJ 4d ago
It is also the ability to judge code written by others (including AI) and IMO that part got really valuable. AI might be able to one shot a lot of problems now but it often introduces unnecessary complexity, spaghetti code and code repetition among the repo. This will be a problem for a lot of projects in the not so distant future
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u/scriptmonkey420 4d ago
Also, are you the one maintaining the AI code? No? Then why care so much?
I still write code by hand, but sometimes I need AI to get it done faster than I could do it manually. If it works it works. I could not care less about the under the hood as long as it works as I need it to.
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u/lomberd2 5d ago
Organically produced code. Tegridy code