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by golly_ned 178 days ago
> Instead of spending three hours figuring out which API to use, they spend twenty minutes evaluating options the AI surfaced

This really isn't the case from what I've seen. It's that they use Cursor or other code generation tools integrated into their development environment to generate code, and if it's functional and looks from a fuzzy distance like 'good' code (in the 'code in the small' sense), they send an oversized PR, and it's up to the reviewer to actually do the thinking.
2 comments
simonw 178 days ago
That's bad and those juniors should be taught to do better or be "managed out of the company".

Their job is to deliver code that they have proved to work.

This inspired me to write a longer form version of this: Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-we-have-proven-to...

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Synthetic7346 178 days ago
The link is a 404 for me
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simonw 178 days ago
I changed it to https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/18/code-proven-to-work/

It's now being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46313297

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rustystump 178 days ago
This. I have seen MRs with generated open cv lut mapping in them because a junior didnt understand that what they needed was a simple interpolation function.

The crux is always that you dont know what u dont know. AI doesnt fix this.

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