alt Hacker NewsThere is a lot of noise out there from anti-AI types who never seriously tried to clean up messes with AI. If you just ask for new features and never look at the code, coding agents will make a mess. If you often ask questions about how to clean up messy code, coding agents are great help for that, too. But you have to ask.
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brazukadev • today at 4:11 PM
asking to clean up is not enough, it is needed to understand the code and fix the things the agents are getting wrong.
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Agents (and humans) don't know what cleanups are safe or a good idea. They can get stuck in loops when different goals (conciseness, performance, etc.) clash. Their "improvements" can break things unintentionally. Targeted improvements can be good. Giant lists of "fix everything" are bad and will break things.
Tech debt comes with insufficient tests, so you won't know what you've broken until too late in many cases.