Comment by suzzer99
3 hours ago
Does good design up front matter as much if an AI can refactor in a few hours something that would take a good developer a month? Refactoring is one of those tasks that's tedious, and too non-trivial for automation, but seems perfect for an AI. Especially if you already have all the tests.
I’m constantly using code agents to work on feature development and they are constantly getting things wrong. They can refactor high level concepts but I have to nudge them to think about the proper abstractions. I don’t see how a multiagent flow could handle those interactions. The bus factor is 1, me.
> Especially if you already have all the tests.
Most tests people write have to be changed if you refactor.
Upgrades, API compatibility, and cross version communication are really important in some domains. A bad design can cause huge pain downstream when you need to make a change.