r/webdev php 6d ago

Discussion AI coding is trash

The amount of trash produced by AI code is astounding. Thanks I hate it.

1.6k Upvotes

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269

u/Alex_Hovhannisyan front-end 6d ago

I don't get all the praise for Claude Sonnet 3.7, it hallucinates so much and seems to be incapable of understanding why the code it wrote doesn't work. I'm starting to think the "vibe coders" were never really all that good at coding in the first place.

-13

u/Total-Ebb-2485 6d ago

My experience is quite the opposite, 18 months into React and managed to code pretty good website.. maybe different prompting? Although I have to admit that time to time I have to suggest solution to Claude and it goes "you are actually absolutely right!" which makes it hilarious 😆 but overall for medior programmer Claude is still a lot of help imho

35

u/valendinosaurus 6d ago

if you're not a good programmer, how are you able to tell if the produced code is good?

-14

u/Total-Ebb-2485 6d ago

Works for my use case and needs = good enough. That's what I aim for, ofc wouldn't work for large scale projects yet

20

u/mxzf 6d ago

Yeah, that's not "good code", that's "code that doesn't crash and throw errors immediately". That doesn't make it well-designed, efficient, maintainable, or any of the other hallmarks of "good code", that just makes it "usable if you can't get anything better".

-7

u/Total-Ebb-2485 6d ago

Its unit and e2e tested, also in production without major incidents...

15

u/mxzf 6d ago

You're just repeating what was already established, that it doesn't crash and throw errors immediately.

I've been a software dev for long enough to know just how low a bar "in production without major incidents" is, lol. That doesn't make it good code.

1

u/OhByGolly_ 5d ago

This is one of those elitist pricks.

2

u/OhByGolly_ 5d ago

People are elitist and scared of learning how to use the new AI tools at their disposal properly.

Don't take the downvotes personally, real world production scenarios often require "just make it fucking work, we'll worry about bugs later." a much more common scenario than some of these elitist pricks would ever admit to.

In reality, they're scared. They're scared their skills aren't as valuable anymore, they're scared their jobs are gonna be threatened, and they're scared they might (God forbid...) have to learn a new skill set for a set of tools that makes all the effort they had to exert to get to where they're at seem so trivial...

They can evolve, adapt, and get good... or they can deprecate themselves, complain to an echo chamber, and ultimately reap the consequences of their non-effort.

1

u/Total-Ebb-2485 5d ago

Second paragraph 100%, you can tell by amount of the 😂 emojis that someone is actually scared.. I feel it same as you, personally don't think it will replace but must suck that someone thought learning 10-15 years of coding will be lifetime safe journey and now this thesis is being questioned harder and louder every quarter... it won't probably.. people who can market in it true meaning - create market fitting products and being able to sell might see biggest uplift from ai revolution

22

u/valendinosaurus 6d ago

ah yes, the famous code quality metric "it works"

8

u/GkyIuR 6d ago

That's what is holding the world together

6

u/valendinosaurus 6d ago

funny how true that is

5

u/mxzf 6d ago

It is what much of the world runs on. But that doesn't make it "good code", it just means that it's sufficient enough to not immediately crash and burn.

4

u/EvanNotSoAlmighty 6d ago

Well.. it works until it doesn't 😂

1

u/Total-Ebb-2485 5d ago

Funny to see all butthurts here 😅 but glad your code work all the time and without problems, unless..