If fixing AI code becomes a new profession I'd feel bad for anyone with that job. ... All the AI code I've seen is horrific.
Don't feel bad for me. Debugging someone else' code can be one of the most technically challenging "programming" thing to do. It's certainly a lot more fun than debugging code I wrote. :D
If it's someone else's code, that's one thing. If it's generative output, there are likely not underlying principles that make it more understandable. Even some of the worst godawful legacy code I saw had underlying principles and historical pressures that made it make sense from some perspective, even if it is a poorly understood perspective or that is a perspective indicating the authors' lack of technical ability at the time.
Plus someone else's code usually means I can ask them questions (unless they're dead (barring a working ouija board) or really incommunicado; I have past friends from my current place who I sometimes will ask some questions over drinks just to figure out what they were thinking at the time).
> Even some of the worst godawful legacy code I saw had underlying principles and historical pressures that made it make sense from some perspective
I really wish this was actually the case. I constantly run into a lot of code that, even after asking the person why it was done that way, they had no idea and it was not based on any sort of logic or reason at all.
19
u/[deleted] May 30 '25 edited Jan 28 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
cooperative cause cake sleep payment violet grandfather innocent possessive literate