Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
I've had the same view since coding agents appeared. LLMs are good for summarizing, thus I tend to use them to understand code. However, the more I understand a code base the more I tend to be more picky with the agent. While the less I know about the code base, the more open I am to let it do its thing.

I've realized that the agent doesn't write 'good' code, instead my vague understanding of what I expect makes me think it does. When I look at the AI code, I see that there are more nuances and decisions that needed to be taken before writing the code. One would say that a spec would suffice, but then I remember TLA+, developed by Leslie Lamport to help developers think critically about their programs/algorithms. Sitting down and formally writing what I want to do helps me better understand the problem and come up with a real -not vaguely defined- solution.

> I've realized that the agent doesn't write 'good' code

No one writes 'good' code. Everyone only writes 'good enough' code. You should always assume the existence of flaws and bugs.

You call "good" code the one that doesn't have the mistakes you know. But you'll never know everything, even if you are as smart as Dijkstra.

loading story #50215246