The author seems to be starting with the assumption that humans need to review all AI code in detail and be able to understand and maintain it without the AI assisting. In my experience, this isn't how people are using AI.
It starts out that way. In the beginning, before they trust it, and before they've learned to prompt it to get the results they want, they use it to automate some tedious bits, but humans still create the initial implementation or pattern and then have AI fill in the gaps. More like turbocharged autocomplete than a sea change in how they write code.
The more people work with AI, the less they worry about the actual code it's producing. I'm not saying this is a good thing. It can introduce bugs, performance problems, security holes. It's reality, though. AI code produced a bug? Tell AI to fix it. AI code is bloated and hard to read? If you care, tell AI to fix it. A lot of people don't care.
When humans are removed completely from code maintenance, the need for maintainable code isn't there anymore.
We're not 100% there yet, but that's where we're headed. For a lot of companies, it's worth the risk to YOLO it because it's already good enough.
I don't personally trust it enough to stop reading the code it produces, but I don't read every single line. I pay more attention to the tests than the code under test. I pay more attention to parts of the code where performance matters. I guide the overall structure. But whenever any of that doesn't meet my standards, I'm not the one who's maintaining it. I just tell the AI to fix it.
Maintenance costs aren't on my radar when maintenance is this cheap.
It starts out that way. In the beginning, before they trust it, and before they've learned to prompt it to get the results they want, they use it to automate some tedious bits, but humans still create the initial implementation or pattern and then have AI fill in the gaps. More like turbocharged autocomplete than a sea change in how they write code.
The more people work with AI, the less they worry about the actual code it's producing. I'm not saying this is a good thing. It can introduce bugs, performance problems, security holes. It's reality, though. AI code produced a bug? Tell AI to fix it. AI code is bloated and hard to read? If you care, tell AI to fix it. A lot of people don't care.
When humans are removed completely from code maintenance, the need for maintainable code isn't there anymore.
We're not 100% there yet, but that's where we're headed. For a lot of companies, it's worth the risk to YOLO it because it's already good enough.
I don't personally trust it enough to stop reading the code it produces, but I don't read every single line. I pay more attention to the tests than the code under test. I pay more attention to parts of the code where performance matters. I guide the overall structure. But whenever any of that doesn't meet my standards, I'm not the one who's maintaining it. I just tell the AI to fix it.
Maintenance costs aren't on my radar when maintenance is this cheap.