Comment by jmathai

5 days ago

After 25 years of writing code in vim, I've found myself managing a bunch of terminal sessions and trying to spot issues in pull requests.

I wouldn't have thought this could be the case and it took me actually embracing it before I was fully sold.

Maybe not a popular opinion but I really do believe...

- code quality as we previously understood will not be a thing in 3-5 years

- IDEs will face a very sharp decline in use

6 comments

jmathai

Reply
flux3125  5 days ago

Code quality and IDEs aren't going anywhere, especially in complex enterprise systems. AI has improved a lot, but we're still far from a "forget about code" world.

  • jampekka  5 days ago

    > Code quality and IDEs aren't going anywhere, especially in complex enterprise systems.

    Was code quality ever there in complex enterprise systems?

    • grey-area  5 days ago

      Yes it was there (not in all of course, but in some), in fact that is where the concept came from - it's necessary when maintaining large systems to keep the code consistent and clear.

  • menaerus  5 days ago

    I don't think we are. We will not be able to keep the peace with code production velocity and I anticipate that focus will be moved strongly to testing and validation

p1necone  5 days ago

> code quality as we previously understood will not be a thing in 3-5 years

Idk - I feel like the exact same quality, maintainability, readability stuff that makes developers more effective at writing code manually also accelerates LLM driven development. It's just less immediately obvious that your codebase being a spaghetti mess is slowing down the LLM because you're not the one having to deal with it directly anymore.

LLMs also have the same tendency to just make the additive changes needed to build each feature - you need to prompt them to refactor first instead if it's going to be beneficial in the long run.

  • jampekka  5 days ago

    I've found that models have improved here significantly in past few months. They have the tendency to pile on ad-hoc solutions by default, but are capable of doing better architectural decisions too if asked.

    A better design can be made somewhat default by AGENTS.md instructions, but they can still make a mess unless on a short leash.