>The people really leading AI coding right now (and I’d put myself near the front, though not all the way there) don’t read code. They manage the things that produce code.
I can’t imagine any other example where people voluntarily move for a black box approach.
Imagine taking a picture on autoshot mode and refusing to look at it. If the client doesn’t like it because it’s too bright, tweak the settings and shoot again, but never look at the output.
What is the logic here? Because if you can read code, I can’t imagine poking the result with black box testing being faster.
Are these people just handing off the review process to others? Are they unable to read code and hiding it? Why would you handicap yourself this way?
show comments
teecha
I find so many of these comments and debates fascinating as a lay person. I'm more tech savy than mostI meet, built my own PCs, know my way around some more 'advanced' things like terminal a bit and have a deeper understanding of computer systems, software, etc. than most people I know. It has always been more of a hobby for me. People look at me as the 'tech' guy even though I'm actually not.
Something I know very little about is coding. I know there are different languages with pros and cons to each. I know some work across operating systems while others don't but other than that I don't know too much.
For the first time I just started working on my own app in Codex and it feels absolutely amazing and magical. I've not seen the code, would have basically no idea how to read it, but i'm working on a niche application for my job that it is custom tailored to my needs and if it works I'll be thrilled. Even better is that the process of building is just feels so special and awesome.
This really does feel like it is on the precipice of something entirely different. I think back to computers before a GUI interface. I think back to even just computers before mobile touch interfaces. I am sure there are plenty of people who thought some of these things wouldn't work for different reasons but I think that is the wrong idea. The focus should be on who this will work for and why and there, I think, there are a ton of possibilities.
For reference, I'm a middle school Assistant Principal working on an app to help me with student scheduling.
GalaxyNova
> I don’t read code anymore
Never thought this would be something people actually take seriously. It really makes me wonder if in 2 - 3 years there will be so much technical debt that we'll have to throw away entire pieces of software.
show comments
andai
Spec is too low level in my experience. The graph continues far further to the left.
I tried doing clean room reimplementations from specs, and just ended up with even worse garbage. Cause it kept all the original garbage and bloated it further!
Giving it a description of what you're actually trying to do works way better. Then it finds the most elegant solution to the problem, both in terms of the code and the UI design.
gchamonlive
The skills required to perform as a software engineer in an environment where competent AI agents is a commodity has shifted. Before it was important for us to be very good as reading documentation and writing code. Now we need to be very good at writing docs, specs and interfaces, and reading code.
That goes a bit against the article, but it's not reading code in the traditional sense where you are looking for common mistakes we humans tend to make. Instead you are looking for clues in the code to determine where you should improve in the docs and specs you fed into your agent, so the next time you run it chances are it'll produce better code, as the article suggests.
And I think this is good. In time, we are going to be forced to think less technically and more semantically.
andai
I don't get it. Can't you just open Claude Code in another terminal? I had like 5 open yesterday.
I haven't used Codex though, so maybe there's something I'm missing about the parallel-ness of it here.
oxag3n
Following this logic, why not move further left?
Become a CTO, CEO or even a venture investor. "Here's $100K worth tokens, analyze market, review various proposals from Agents, invest tokens, maximize profit".
You know why not? Because it will be more obvious it doesn't work as advertised.
show comments
prewett
I really wish posts like this explained what sort of development they are doing. Is this for an internal CRUD server? Internal React app? Scala server with three instances? Golang server with complex AWS configuration? 10k lines? 100k lines? 1M+? Externally facing? iOS app? Algorithm-heavy photo processing desktop app? It would give me a much better idea of whether the argument is reasonable, and whether it is applicable for the kind of software I generally write.
show comments
Ifkaluva
Sometimes when I vibe code, I also have a problem with the code, and find myself asking: “What went wrong with the system that produced the code?”
The answer is clear: I didn’t write the code, I didn’t read it, I have no idea what it does, and that’s why it has a bug.
show comments
sho_hn
I still think this is mostly people who never could hack it at coding taking to the new opportunities that these tools afford them without having to seriously invest in the skill, and basking in touting their skilless-ness being accepted as the new temporary cool.
Which is perhaps what they should do, of course. Any transition is a chance to get ahead and redefine yourself.
show comments
Groxx
>I think the industry is moving left. Toward specs. The code is becoming an implementation detail. What matters is the system that produces it - the requirements, the constraints, the architecture. Get those right, and the code follows.
So basically a return to waterfall design.
Rather than YOLO planning (agile), we go back to YOLO implementation (farming it out to dozens of replaceable peons, but this time they're even worse).
dougthesnails
Why have a spec when I have the concrete implementation and a system ready and willing to answer any questions I have about it? I don't understand why people value an artifact that can be out of sync with reality over the actual reality. The LLM can answer questions based on the code. We might drift away from needing a code editor, but I likely won't be drifting to reading specs in a world where I can converse with the deployed implementation.
letstango
> The people really leading AI coding right now (and I’d put myself near the front, though not all the way there)
So humble. Who is he again?
show comments
sho_hn
This blog post is written by a product manager, not a programmer. Their CV speaks to an Economics background, a stint in market research, writing small scripting-type programs ("Cron+MySQL data warehouse") and then off to the product management races.
What it's trying to express is that the (T)PM job still should still be safe because they can just team-lead a dozen agents instead of software developers.
Take with a grain of salt when it comes to relevance for "coding", or the future role breakdown in tech organizations.
show comments
insin
turning a big dial taht says "Psychosis" on one side and "Wishful thinking" on the other and constantly looking back at the LinkedIn audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right
pjmlp
Yeah, the revenge of waterfall, specs documents for AI agents.
bigwheels
Why do the illustrations bear such a strong resemblance to those in the Gas Town article?
Is it a nano banana tendency or was it probably intentional?
show comments
yodsanklai
> Here’s the thing: I don’t read code anymore. I used to write code and read code. Now when something isn’t working, I don’t go look at the code.
Recently I picked a smallish task from our backlog. This is some code I'm not familiar with, frontend stuff I wouldn't tackle normally.
Claude wrote something. I tested, it didn't work. I explained the issue. It added a bunch of traces, asked me to collect the logs, figured out a fix, submitted the change.
Got bunch of linter errors that I don't understand, and that I copied and pasted to Claude. It fixed something, but still got lint errors, which Claude dismissed as irrelevant, but I realized I wasn't happy with the new behavior.
After 3 days of iteration, my change seems ok, passed the CI, the linters, and automatic review.
At that stage, I have no idea if this is the right way to fix the problem, and if it breaks something, I won't be able to fix it myself as I'm clueless. Also, it could be that a human reviewer tells me it's totally wrong, or ask me questions I won't be able to answer.
Not only, this process wasn't fun at all, but I also didn't learn anything, and I may introduce technical debt which AI may not be able to fix.
I agree that coding agents can boost efficiency in some cases, but I don't see a shift left of IDEs at that stage.
show comments
Xx_crazy420_xX
Why create IDE without IDE features? Whats the benefit of this over using IDE with Codex plugin? I don't believe that you can review the code without code traversal by references, so looks like its directed towards toy projects/ noobs. And the agents are not yet near the autonomy that will omit the code review in complex systems.
ottah
> Where IDEs are headed and why specs matter more than code.
We are very far away from this being a settled or agreed upon statement and I really struggle to understand how one vendor making a tool is indicative of an industry practice.
gtm1260
I don't like the craft of the app. There are a few moments that really left me feeling it wasn't 100 percent thought through like cursor is at this point.
hollowturtle
Hell I see the big banner picture hallucinated by a prompt and all I see is an unproductive mess. Won't comment on the takes the article makes they're just miserable
frank00001
Clearly written by someone who has no systems of importance in production. If my code fail people loose money, planes halts, cars break down. Read. The. Code.
show comments
franze
has someone figured out on how to set the codex app to yolo mode yet?
the constant asking drives me crazy
show comments
thefz
I have always thought that AI code generation is an irresistible attraction for those personalities who lack the technical skills or knowledge necessary for programming, but nevertheless feel undeservedly like geniuses. This post is proof of that.
Also, the generated picture in this post makes me want to kick someone in the nuts. It doesn't explain anything.
show comments
jwpapi
I really wonder why nobody is talking about how it is more important to be able to test the code.
9/10 my ai generated code is bad before my verification layers 9/10 its good after.
Claude fights through your rules. And if you code in another language you could use other agents to verify code.
This is the challenge now, effectively verify the code. Whenever I end up with a bad response I ask myself what layers could i set to stop AI as early as possible.
Also things like namings, comments, tree traversal, context engineering, even data-structures, multi-agenting. I know it sounds like buzzword, but these are the topics a software-engineer really should think about. Everything else is frankly cope.
>The people really leading AI coding right now (and I’d put myself near the front, though not all the way there) don’t read code. They manage the things that produce code.
I can’t imagine any other example where people voluntarily move for a black box approach.
Imagine taking a picture on autoshot mode and refusing to look at it. If the client doesn’t like it because it’s too bright, tweak the settings and shoot again, but never look at the output.
What is the logic here? Because if you can read code, I can’t imagine poking the result with black box testing being faster.
Are these people just handing off the review process to others? Are they unable to read code and hiding it? Why would you handicap yourself this way?
I find so many of these comments and debates fascinating as a lay person. I'm more tech savy than mostI meet, built my own PCs, know my way around some more 'advanced' things like terminal a bit and have a deeper understanding of computer systems, software, etc. than most people I know. It has always been more of a hobby for me. People look at me as the 'tech' guy even though I'm actually not.
Something I know very little about is coding. I know there are different languages with pros and cons to each. I know some work across operating systems while others don't but other than that I don't know too much.
For the first time I just started working on my own app in Codex and it feels absolutely amazing and magical. I've not seen the code, would have basically no idea how to read it, but i'm working on a niche application for my job that it is custom tailored to my needs and if it works I'll be thrilled. Even better is that the process of building is just feels so special and awesome.
This really does feel like it is on the precipice of something entirely different. I think back to computers before a GUI interface. I think back to even just computers before mobile touch interfaces. I am sure there are plenty of people who thought some of these things wouldn't work for different reasons but I think that is the wrong idea. The focus should be on who this will work for and why and there, I think, there are a ton of possibilities.
For reference, I'm a middle school Assistant Principal working on an app to help me with student scheduling.
> I don’t read code anymore
Never thought this would be something people actually take seriously. It really makes me wonder if in 2 - 3 years there will be so much technical debt that we'll have to throw away entire pieces of software.
Spec is too low level in my experience. The graph continues far further to the left.
I tried doing clean room reimplementations from specs, and just ended up with even worse garbage. Cause it kept all the original garbage and bloated it further!
Giving it a description of what you're actually trying to do works way better. Then it finds the most elegant solution to the problem, both in terms of the code and the UI design.
The skills required to perform as a software engineer in an environment where competent AI agents is a commodity has shifted. Before it was important for us to be very good as reading documentation and writing code. Now we need to be very good at writing docs, specs and interfaces, and reading code.
That goes a bit against the article, but it's not reading code in the traditional sense where you are looking for common mistakes we humans tend to make. Instead you are looking for clues in the code to determine where you should improve in the docs and specs you fed into your agent, so the next time you run it chances are it'll produce better code, as the article suggests.
And I think this is good. In time, we are going to be forced to think less technically and more semantically.
I don't get it. Can't you just open Claude Code in another terminal? I had like 5 open yesterday.
I haven't used Codex though, so maybe there's something I'm missing about the parallel-ness of it here.
Following this logic, why not move further left?
Become a CTO, CEO or even a venture investor. "Here's $100K worth tokens, analyze market, review various proposals from Agents, invest tokens, maximize profit".
You know why not? Because it will be more obvious it doesn't work as advertised.
I really wish posts like this explained what sort of development they are doing. Is this for an internal CRUD server? Internal React app? Scala server with three instances? Golang server with complex AWS configuration? 10k lines? 100k lines? 1M+? Externally facing? iOS app? Algorithm-heavy photo processing desktop app? It would give me a much better idea of whether the argument is reasonable, and whether it is applicable for the kind of software I generally write.
Sometimes when I vibe code, I also have a problem with the code, and find myself asking: “What went wrong with the system that produced the code?”
The answer is clear: I didn’t write the code, I didn’t read it, I have no idea what it does, and that’s why it has a bug.
I still think this is mostly people who never could hack it at coding taking to the new opportunities that these tools afford them without having to seriously invest in the skill, and basking in touting their skilless-ness being accepted as the new temporary cool.
Which is perhaps what they should do, of course. Any transition is a chance to get ahead and redefine yourself.
>I think the industry is moving left. Toward specs. The code is becoming an implementation detail. What matters is the system that produces it - the requirements, the constraints, the architecture. Get those right, and the code follows.
So basically a return to waterfall design.
Rather than YOLO planning (agile), we go back to YOLO implementation (farming it out to dozens of replaceable peons, but this time they're even worse).
Why have a spec when I have the concrete implementation and a system ready and willing to answer any questions I have about it? I don't understand why people value an artifact that can be out of sync with reality over the actual reality. The LLM can answer questions based on the code. We might drift away from needing a code editor, but I likely won't be drifting to reading specs in a world where I can converse with the deployed implementation.
> The people really leading AI coding right now (and I’d put myself near the front, though not all the way there)
So humble. Who is he again?
This blog post is written by a product manager, not a programmer. Their CV speaks to an Economics background, a stint in market research, writing small scripting-type programs ("Cron+MySQL data warehouse") and then off to the product management races.
What it's trying to express is that the (T)PM job still should still be safe because they can just team-lead a dozen agents instead of software developers.
Take with a grain of salt when it comes to relevance for "coding", or the future role breakdown in tech organizations.
turning a big dial taht says "Psychosis" on one side and "Wishful thinking" on the other and constantly looking back at the LinkedIn audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right
Yeah, the revenge of waterfall, specs documents for AI agents.
Why do the illustrations bear such a strong resemblance to those in the Gas Town article?
https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...
Is it a nano banana tendency or was it probably intentional?
> Here’s the thing: I don’t read code anymore. I used to write code and read code. Now when something isn’t working, I don’t go look at the code.
Recently I picked a smallish task from our backlog. This is some code I'm not familiar with, frontend stuff I wouldn't tackle normally.
Claude wrote something. I tested, it didn't work. I explained the issue. It added a bunch of traces, asked me to collect the logs, figured out a fix, submitted the change.
Got bunch of linter errors that I don't understand, and that I copied and pasted to Claude. It fixed something, but still got lint errors, which Claude dismissed as irrelevant, but I realized I wasn't happy with the new behavior.
After 3 days of iteration, my change seems ok, passed the CI, the linters, and automatic review.
At that stage, I have no idea if this is the right way to fix the problem, and if it breaks something, I won't be able to fix it myself as I'm clueless. Also, it could be that a human reviewer tells me it's totally wrong, or ask me questions I won't be able to answer.
Not only, this process wasn't fun at all, but I also didn't learn anything, and I may introduce technical debt which AI may not be able to fix.
I agree that coding agents can boost efficiency in some cases, but I don't see a shift left of IDEs at that stage.
Why create IDE without IDE features? Whats the benefit of this over using IDE with Codex plugin? I don't believe that you can review the code without code traversal by references, so looks like its directed towards toy projects/ noobs. And the agents are not yet near the autonomy that will omit the code review in complex systems.
> Where IDEs are headed and why specs matter more than code.
We are very far away from this being a settled or agreed upon statement and I really struggle to understand how one vendor making a tool is indicative of an industry practice.
I don't like the craft of the app. There are a few moments that really left me feeling it wasn't 100 percent thought through like cursor is at this point.
Hell I see the big banner picture hallucinated by a prompt and all I see is an unproductive mess. Won't comment on the takes the article makes they're just miserable
Clearly written by someone who has no systems of importance in production. If my code fail people loose money, planes halts, cars break down. Read. The. Code.
has someone figured out on how to set the codex app to yolo mode yet?
the constant asking drives me crazy
I have always thought that AI code generation is an irresistible attraction for those personalities who lack the technical skills or knowledge necessary for programming, but nevertheless feel undeservedly like geniuses. This post is proof of that.
Also, the generated picture in this post makes me want to kick someone in the nuts. It doesn't explain anything.
I really wonder why nobody is talking about how it is more important to be able to test the code.
9/10 my ai generated code is bad before my verification layers 9/10 its good after.
Claude fights through your rules. And if you code in another language you could use other agents to verify code.
This is the challenge now, effectively verify the code. Whenever I end up with a bad response I ask myself what layers could i set to stop AI as early as possible.
Also things like namings, comments, tree traversal, context engineering, even data-structures, multi-agenting. I know it sounds like buzzword, but these are the topics a software-engineer really should think about. Everything else is frankly cope.
Not really what "shift left" means...