Comment by thomashabets2
4 hours ago
It could lead to a mess, sure. But my favourite prompt on an LLM-untouched codebase is along the lines of "find UB and other bugs. If the fix is less than 5 lines, fix it and commit it. One change per commit". Then I of course check the commit history before pushing.
My experience over the last couple of years with this type of prompt is that eventually you run out of bugs to find (meaning you reach "I see what you mean, but I disagree").
And those fixes don't cause messes.
And a new model may find something new, but not even remotely the volume seen the first time. This indicates to me that the supply of bugs is finite, and after this period of house cleaning, it should go down.
But anyway, a mess (decoherence) doesn't necessarily mean an exploitable mess.
Reading that good article, I find myself thinking that we did not need LLMs to get decoherence in complex software or systems. At least LLMs don't have personal fiefdoms, egos, and company politics adding to encouraging decoherence.
I had in mind living systems, as most software systems of interest are: a perpetually moving target, continuously modified, expanded and refactored. Many of these systems are apparently now being polluted via careless and massive vibe-coding.
One thing to keep in mind is the logic of technological evolution and market competition will ensure that we always push the complexity of our systems to the edge of what is possible using current tools.
I don't deny that coding agents can be (and are) very useful for software engineering, as you say they have a lot going for them, and I'm pretty sure that once the dust has settled, they will be seen as an intrinsic part of the process, but I also am convinced that skilled humans will still very much be needed to direct and supervise them.