Comprehension Debt: The Ticking Time Bomb of LLM-Generated Code

I used claude code to migrate a small rust project from raw sql to an ORM. It was next level. In a timespan of a small bug fix I could rewrite the data model. It tested the code, it fixed the errors, I was amazed. I reviewed every change, so I could spot problems like migration would fail with prod data. I wrote a new prompt to fix that and it fixed.

For anybody new to claude code: It's a tui app where you can log in and write prompts for the project in the current directory. The way it works, it searches files in the project based on the prompt, and it locates the related code sections. So it gathers the context pretty well. It can suggest changes, it can suggest running CLI commands, it can read its output. It reacts to itself. You can accept or intercept and correct it anytime.

I ran it in docker just in case.

In summary, this is a real deal, but of course the code needs to be reviewed. Sometimes, it produces, simply put, unmaintainable code, that shouldn't be used. Works or not, it should move.

Comments

Valmond @lemmy.world 4d ago
I mean lots of code was not up to scratch even before this craziness.
- codeinabox @programming.dev 4d ago
  Exactly but generative AI has exacerbated the problem
  What is new is the scale of the problem being created as lightning-speed code generators spew reams of unread code into millions of projects
- javasux @lemmy.world 4d ago
  Immense copium
fxdave @lemmy.ml 4d ago
I used claude code to migrate a small rust project from raw sql to an ORM. It was next level. In a timespan of a small bug fix I could rewrite the data model. It tested the code, it fixed the errors, I was amazed. I reviewed every change, so I could spot problems like migration would fail with prod data. I wrote a new prompt to fix that and it fixed.
For anybody new to claude code: It's a tui app where you can log in and write prompts for the project in the current directory. The way it works, it searches files in the project based on the prompt, and it locates the related code sections. So it gathers the context pretty well. It can suggest changes, it can suggest running CLI commands, it can read its output. It reacts to itself. You can accept or intercept and correct it anytime.
I ran it in docker just in case.
In summary, this is a real deal, but of course the code needs to be reviewed. Sometimes, it produces, simply put, unmaintainable code, that shouldn't be used. Works or not, it should move.