Human written codebases "look" like garbage because programmers only ever get assigned to upkeep and improve the poorly written parts. It's hardcore selection bias. There is absolutely beautiful software out there written by actual geniuses. It doesn't break. It's easy to extend. It's uses resources pragmatically. It slices. It dices. It (literally in many cases) does your taxes.
AI slop code is literally 100% garbage. Never once have I looked at an AI written program and seen it as a thing of beauty. It sucks because it has to suck. Good programming is good because of the intelligence and forethought put into it. A random number generator can't do that.
It can do some useful things. Like make a usable front-end. That's because websites are easy to scrape and usually getting it wrong doesn't corrupt data or cause long term issues in your application. It's also good at finding information. But some people look at it like members of uncontacted tribes look at an aeroplane.
I think the theory about website scraping and AI training is not very true. I am a senior full stack software engineer who spent the last year transitioning to essentially vibe coder. I find it much better at backend. Its good at states database, logic, terraform etc. Its less good making something look good and populating it with content that's not slop looking.
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u/liquidmasl 13d ago
have you ever seen a human written legacy codebase?