I came away with a very different conclusion, which is that the fact that such “bad” software can be so resoundingly successful for a business, yet be so odious to experienced human reviewers, means that it was the right engineering choice to go fast, rather than “do things right” by emphasizing code quality.
What good would it truly be if a 3K line function is split into 8 modules? It’ll be neater and more comprehensible to a human reader. More debuggable, definitely.
But given the business problem the have: winner takes all of a massive market, first mover wins, — the right move is to throw the usual rulebook about quality software out the window, and double down on the bets of the company, that AI will make human code engineering less and less necessary very quickly.
It turned out incredibly well despite the “bad” engineering — which in this case, I really count as good engineering.
What good would it truly be if a 3K line function is split into 8 modules? It’ll be neater and more comprehensible to a human reader. More debuggable, definitely.
But given the business problem the have: winner takes all of a massive market, first mover wins, — the right move is to throw the usual rulebook about quality software out the window, and double down on the bets of the company, that AI will make human code engineering less and less necessary very quickly.
It turned out incredibly well despite the “bad” engineering — which in this case, I really count as good engineering.