alt Hacker NewsDefinitely the market incentives for "good code" have never been worse, but I'm wouldn't be so sure the cost of migrating decent pieces of generated code to good code is worse than writing good code from whole cloth.
Definitely the market incentives for "good code" have never been worse, but I'm wouldn't be so sure the cost of migrating decent pieces of generated code to good code is worse than writing good code from whole cloth.
I find that implementing a sound solution from scratch is generally lower effort than taking something that already exists and making it sound.
The former: 1) understand the problem, 2) solve the problem.
The latter: 1) understand the problem, 2) solve the problem, 3) understand how somebody or something else understood & solved the problem, 4) diff those two, 5) plan a transition from that solution to this solution, 6) implement that transition (ideally without unplanned downtime and/or catastrophic loss of data).
This is also why I’m not a fan of code reviews. Code review is basically steps 1–4 from the second approach, plus having to verbally explain the diff, every time.