Comment by procaryote 4 days ago
I really hope I'll never need to touch code written by people who code in python and throws it at a plausible randomiser to get java or C
If you for some reason do this, please keep the python around so I can at least look at whatever the human was aiming at. It's probably also wrong as they picked this workflow, but there's a chance it has something useful
I get the "old man yells at cloud" vibes from your comment. Who cares how he got the result? I thought our job is to create working software. If this flow works for him and creates code that meets company standards, then more power to him.
However, if the output quality is crap, then well, maybe his creativity should not be rewarded. I've seem hefty amount of Map<Object, Object> in Java, written primarily by JS developers.
"create working software" is usually just a tiny bit of the job. That software then exists and needs to be extended and maintained.
If the result is great and maintainable code, great. I imagine it won't be, as no one has actually understood it even once.
As an old man myself, I am quite sure the other old man has a good reason to yell at this particular cloud. Software is tremendously complex. It is one thing to write it, it is another to amend the thousands and thousands of bugs that inevitably follow, and implement the even bigger amount of adjustments and improvements successful software requires. The latter is the bane of any kind of code generation, whether is RAD, no-code, low-code or LLM ported codebases.
Any kind of code generation that proves incredibly productivity in the writing of software is kind of like saying you have a lot of money by maxing out your creditcard. Maybe you can pay it back, maybe you can't. The fact that there is no mention of future debt is exactly the kind of thing that old men get suspicious about.
I'm not saying the old men are correct. I'm just pointing out the reason for the yelling.
"Software is incredibly complex"
Who sold you on that lie? Software is anything but complex. Literally guys without any kind of degree could do it. You should try hardware design, validation, with one of them FPGA platforms. Start with something easy like a PCIe core... :-) It will plant you back in reality real quick.
The biggest scam is SWE's convincing themselves that whatever they're doing is soooo complicated!
LLMs are there to get the meat of the software in. Fine tuning it is easy when you already have all the syntax written for you. With enough prompting on how you want the code laid out, the modern models do a really good job of getting it right with very minor things you have to tweak.