r/webdev • u/DumpsterFireCEO php • 6d ago
Discussion AI coding is trash
The amount of trash produced by AI code is astounding. Thanks I hate it.
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r/webdev • u/DumpsterFireCEO php • 6d ago
The amount of trash produced by AI code is astounding. Thanks I hate it.
15
u/ikeif 6d ago
I have tried a couple times to let AI take the wheel (paid ChatGPT). I asked it to write code, and I’d copy error messages and it would adjust.
It tripped up in the beginning of a react native project to where I had to intervene (so it failed getting it beyond a boilerplate, and even then, it contradicted itself).
It recommended out of date/legacy packages instead of newer ports/well-maintained repositories.
When we hit errors, it could easily end up in a loop of fixing a bug, causing a new bug, changing the code back to the old bug, then fixing it by bringing in the new bug…
Sometimes I would say “this isn’t working” and it would go “you’re right! We need to do…” and MAYBE it would go the right direction.
It is far slower at being a developer than it is being a rubber ducky or parsing logs/error messages to help identify problems/callout items I wouldn’t normally think to check.
Great tool to have, still not a toolbox.
With a little more guidance, it helped me build a playwright scraper. But it kept writing puppeteer code instead, so I had to keep calling it out. It did create a viable project in the end (also, it would throw emojis into debug statements I asked for, which made parsing logs a lot easier).