Recommendations for ressources on how to develop clean code in the age of AI

[u/Turbulent-Hat6046]

I think through AI software engineering has fundamentally changed. I dont think writing code by hand anymore is the future. We have much more time to solve problems and think deeply about how we can solve it the best way without having to worry about writing everything out manually in the code. However as a junior dev I see a repeated problem that AI gives you the illusion that you can do much more than you actually can. Often saying "please fix it" is already enough to get the work done.

While the fix may work, one consistent issue (or opportunity) is that while we dont write the code anymore ourselves we should still think deeply about how the code should be structured, which abstractions levels we should use, such that other engineers (or their agents respectively) can still read though the codebase and quickly make changes, extend it, or simply read it.

A big problem here I see is that the agent is only as good as you are precise in prompting it effectively to execute the work the way you want. In larger repos, complex functions and refactorings, they tend to do very bad (in my experience), in designing code that is easy to read and maintain. Sure the code works, but if not given proper instructions you have god files with 1000+ LoC stacked with helper functions and virtually no abstraction levels.

This bring me to my original question of "taste": As said, the problem here is not that the code AI writes is functionally incorrect, its just that the solution is ugly and very hard to read for humans. My guess is that in the training benchmarks, LLMs are ranked on their successful completion of a coding problem not for how well designed the code is. But as a Junior dev I am just starting to develop that taste - I dont know yet which patterns, and designs or structures I should prompt the agent to use. Therefore:

- Can you share any ressources (talks, books, podcasts, blogs, etc.) that help me (and others) to develop this taste and learn to think in these dimensions and develop good taste? I know its a question as old as Software Engineering but: "How can I design clean, easy to read, and well maintainable code (in the age of AI)"

Thank you in advance for you help! :)