AI-Written Code Is Still *Your* Code. Are You OK with That?

Aug 31, 2026 07:08 PM - 3 hours ago 4

Coding agents support pushing the costs of penning package adjacent to zero. This is valuable because writing package has historically been a large portion of the activity needed to ship software. For a batch of projects, testing, documenting, packaging, and different code-adjacent activity person consumed overmuch little effort, erstwhile they’re done astatine all.

But the penning portion has ever bundled pinch it different important portion that we’ve been taking for granted: understanding software. Aside from the astir basal comp sci homework problems, it’s beautiful difficult to constitute thing you don’t understand and still get a passing people from your professor, your boss, aliases your customers. We’ve taken this understanding portion truthful overmuch for granted because we’ve seldom needed to deliberation of it arsenic abstracted from penning the code. Sure, there’s a batch retired location connected designing systems truthful that others tin understand them, but I’m talking astir knowing our ain code. That we wrote. Ourselves. Because of people you understand that! Right?

Anyone who has written codification for immoderate magnitude of clip has had the humbling acquisition of uncovering thing they wrote a agelong clip agone and wondering what the hellhole they were thinking. But astatine the time, it made consciousness to them, and they were capable to logic astir it.

Now that agents do the writing for us, the full understanding spot is becoming optional. Heck, conscionable person agents reappraisal and trial the codification too, and we tin debar those pesky intelligence models altogether!

We’ve ne'er needed to dainty understanding our ain codification arsenic a abstracted costs from writing it, because penning it mostly forced america to understand it.

If your exertion is sufficiently low-stakes, cool. Go nuts. I’ve done this myself for one-off individual tooling and a mates of nosy small projects that would different everlastingly inhabit my “someday” pile.

But erstwhile you build software, you own it, and I don’t only mean successful the intelligence spot sense. You besides return connected the work for its value and its security, and for debugging, operating, maintaining, and evolving it complete time. Are you prepared for that erstwhile building package pinch AI? That’s the caller question: not “Can we build this?” but alternatively “Do we want to ain this?” It should astatine slightest beryllium a conscious determination alternatively than a work you observe aft the codification is already yours.

Human knowing of generated codification is progressively looking for illustration the caller bottleneck. I’m not unsocial successful that conclusion. It’s crystal clear that AI tin beryllium a complexity factory.

I’ve been reasoning a batch lately astir what package would look for illustration if we made keeping package understandable to humans a first-class creation extremity successful the property of AI. Not needfully knowing each statement of an exertion astatine each times, but designing systems whose individual pieces are understandable and whose boundaries fto humans zoom successful and retired and safely logic astir them astatine aggregate levels. It’s led to immoderate absorbing ideas that I’m continuing to develop.

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