I'd add in "code is easier to write than it is to read" - hence abstraction layers designed to present us with higher level code, hiding the complex implementations.
But LLMs are both really good at writing code _and_ reading code. However, they're not great at knowing when to stop - either finishing early and leaving stuff broken, over-engineering and adding in stuff that's not needed or deciding it's too hard and just removing stuff it deems unimportant.
I've found a TDD approach (with not just unit tests but high-level end-to-end behaviour-driven tests) works really well with them. I give them a high-level feature specification (remember Gherkin specifications?) and tell it to make that pass (with unit tests for any intermediate code it writes), make sure it hasn't broken anything (by running the other high-level tests) then, finally, refactor. I've also just started telling it to generate screenshots for each step in the feature, so I can quickly evaluate the UI flow (inspired by Simon Willison's Rodney tool).
Now I don't actually need to care if the code is easy to read or easy to change - because the LLM handles the details. I just need to make sure that when it says "I have implemented Feature X" that the steps it has written for that feature actually do what is expected and the UI fits the user's needs.
But LLMs are both really good at writing code _and_ reading code. However, they're not great at knowing when to stop - either finishing early and leaving stuff broken, over-engineering and adding in stuff that's not needed or deciding it's too hard and just removing stuff it deems unimportant.
I've found a TDD approach (with not just unit tests but high-level end-to-end behaviour-driven tests) works really well with them. I give them a high-level feature specification (remember Gherkin specifications?) and tell it to make that pass (with unit tests for any intermediate code it writes), make sure it hasn't broken anything (by running the other high-level tests) then, finally, refactor. I've also just started telling it to generate screenshots for each step in the feature, so I can quickly evaluate the UI flow (inspired by Simon Willison's Rodney tool).
Now I don't actually need to care if the code is easy to read or easy to change - because the LLM handles the details. I just need to make sure that when it says "I have implemented Feature X" that the steps it has written for that feature actually do what is expected and the UI fits the user's needs.