[delbronski]

So we’ve already grown nostalgic for the old days… skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then… but it’s been 6 hours and I can’t figure out why this does not work anymore. So you read some docs but they are poorly written. So you find something on Google and try to hack that into your solution. But nope, now more stuff broke. There goes your day.

[AstroBen]

> skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then

This is exactly how you learn to create better abstractions and write clear code that future you will understand.

[delbronski]

You are right about the learning part. But I’ve been at this for 20 years. Even the best, most pristine and organizad code I’ve seen has not been “clear”. The average LLM code today is a lot more clear than the average developer code.

[bluefirebrand]

Yeah, why spend time puzzling over old, proven code that you wrote. Instead spend your time puzzling over new, unproven code that an LLM generated

[civvv]

Literally a skill issue?

[delbronski]

Yes. A skill I have not mastered in 20 years. And I’ve yet to meet a person who has. If you are out here writing perfectly looking code 100% of the time that everyone else including you can perfectly understand a year later, then hats off to you.

But in my long career even the smartest most experienced software engineers I’ve met m write their share of crazy abstractions from hell.