Tell HN: Software Was Sloppy Before AI, Too

Summary

A Hacker News post argues that software engineers should stop treating sloppy work as a problem created by AI. The author lists familiar software-development failures, including difficult code reviews, “works on my machine” bugs, technical debt, delayed deadlines, and serious security or reliability incidents, as problems that existed before generative AI. The post also rejects the assumption that all AI-generated code is inherently low quality, saying some AI-produced code can be better than code written by the person criticizing it. Rather than using broad labels such as “vibe coding,” the author calls for concrete quality standards that can be applied to the result. The author further suggests building AI systems that critique AI-generated code so developers can improve their practices, while accusing some anti-AI reactions of being driven partly by resentment toward work others could not produce themselves.