alt Hacker NewsI'd claim the opposite. Better models design better software, and quickly better software than what most software developers were writing.
Just yesterday I asked Opus 4.6 what I could do to make an old macOS AppKit project more testable, too lazy to even encumber the question with my own preferences like I usually do, and it pitched a refactor into Elm architecture. And then it did the refactor while I took a piss.
The idea that AI writes bad software or can't improve existing software in substantial ways is really outdated. Just consider how most human-written software is untested despite everyone agreeing testing is a good idea simply because test-friendly arch takes a lot of thought and test maintenance slow you down. AI will do all of that, just mention something about 'testability' in AGENTS.md.
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And now you have no idea how any of the code works
AI writes bad software by virtue of it being written by the AI, not you. No actual team member understands what's going on with the code. You can't interrogate the AI for its decision making. It doesn't understand the architecture its built. There's nobody you can ask about why anything is built the way it is - it just exists
Its interesting watching people forget that the #1 most important thing is developers who understand a codebase thoroughly. Institutional knowledge is absolutely key to maintaining a codebase, and making good decisions in the long term
Its always been possible to trade long term productivity for short term gains like this. But now you simply have no idea what's going on in your code, which is an absolute nightmare for long term productivity
OK so this comes back to the question I started this subthread with: where is this better software? Why isn't someone selling it to me? I've been told for a year it's coming any day now (though invariably the next month I'm told last month's tools were in fact crap and useless compared to the new generation so I just have to wait for this round to kick in) and at some point I do have to actually see it if you expect me to believe it's real.