[HuwFulcher]

This is a challenge which I don't think AI tools like Cursor have cracked yet. They're great for laying "fresh pavement" but it's akin to being a project manager contracting the work out.

Even if I use Cursor (or some other equivalent) and review the code I find my mental model of the system is much more lacking. It actually had a net negative on my productivity as it gave me anxiety at going back to the codebase.

If an AI tool could help a user interactively learn the mental model I think that would be a great step in the right direction.

[ivape]

but it's akin to being a project manager contracting the work out.

And that's probably the difference between those who are okay with vibe coding and those who aren't. A leader of a company that doesn't care about code quality (elegant code, good tradeoffs, etc) would never have cared if 10 monkeys outputted the code pre-AI or if 10 robot monkeys outputted the code with AI. It's only a developer, of a certain type, that would care to say "pause" in either of those situations.

Out of principal I would not share or build coding tools for these people. They literally did not care all these years about code quality, and the last thing I want to do is enable them on any level.

[woah]

Or maybe if you are good at delegating and reviewing code and stepping in to do a deep dive by hand when needed to maintain understanding, then you can use LLMs to greatly increase your speed.

[marcosdumay]

Well, now they can have their way without a pesky developer second-guessing every decision of them.

I don't want to participate on it either, but I'm glad they'll have the chance to make things their way with all the consequences it brings unfiltered.

[catigula]

An AI tool can both navigate a legacy codebase and help explain it to you successfully currently, right now, if you're doing it correctly.

I've contracted some of this understanding of pieces/intellectual work out to Claude code many, many times successfully.

[HuwFulcher]

Yes it’s definitely possible now. My point was that people need to move past “vibe coding” to using the AI as what it should be, an assistant