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Comment by kaashif | original | Grieving the loss of details
[−]kaashif · 2026-10-10 Sat 17:21 UTC · link
Yeah, this is the tough part. In order to write code that worked, you had to have some kind of mental model of it. Now that's not true.

Now, when someone sends a working PR in, even high quality and well tested, they may actually have no idea how it works.

[−]GolfPopper · 2026-10-10 Sat 19:05 UTC · link
Which, in my experience, means they sometimes cannot fix the bugs they've introduced.
[−]abalashov · 2026-10-11 Sun 04:46 UTC · link
No, indeed. They rely on LLMs to do that, and that necessarily adds a degree of entropy that will eventually cause the thing to vibrate apart, but much later, in the future. Meanwhile, the incentives are to fix (or "fix") the bug now.
[−]xtajv · 2026-10-11 Sun 07:17 UTC · link
I think that software engineering is finally entering the "regulations written in blood" era.
[−]abalashov · 2026-10-11 Sun 07:52 UTC · link
Oh yeah. The AI hype cultural moment will wear off, but we'll be stuck with the technical debt, cognitive debt and slop code, which has made it into critical production systems, for decades, probably.

The code--as long as you don't try to modify or evolve it, engendering further nondeterministic degradation--will mostly work, but 0.01% of the time it won't, and you'll never be able to predict when and where that'll be.