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by matheusmoreira·2d ago·view on hn ↗
> can't change a single line of code in the product without breaking 1000s of existing tests

> all held together with thousands of flags

> ridden with mysterious macros that one cannot decipher

> needs to understand the values and the effects of 20 different flag

> Sometimes 100s

> only reason why this product is still surviving and still works is due to literally millions of tests

> The fact that this product even works is nothing short of a miracle!

Sorry, but I can't think of any adjective for this mess other than just "bad". That's some truly industrial grade slop, and I hope whoever worked on that got paid handsomely for it.

1 comments
It is quite shocking how you over generalize one massive codebase of a working product that has been in use for decades to a couple of projects you did with your single human in the loop process while projecting that experience onto every other project that uses ai to write code regardless of scope and scale. I don't understand your train of thought here.
Not sure what's so confusing here.

I don't like the stigma towards AIs and the people who use them, which is what a post titled "TEMU-Fication of software" is ultimately all about. Call me a misanthrope if you want, as some people have done in the past.

Since I don't like it, I go out of my way to post counterexamples whenever I think people are deluding themselves into thinking human work is somehow magically guaranteed to be better. I cited that example specifically so you wouldn't have to take my word for it.

Working product? With this argument, you're basically admitting that it's all fine as long as it works. What does it matter if the database needs a billion special case flags not to fall apart? What does it matter if it's some AI slop? So long as it ships and people get paid, it's all fine.

I mean seriously, would you work on that Oracle thing if they weren't paying you serious money as compensation? You can literally feel the suffering through that person's words. Whoever they are I hope they're doing alright now.

And it is equally shocking to me that people think it's fine to thoughtlessly generalize and dismiss projects that use AI as slop and AI users as incompetent vibecoders.

So I don't think I'm generalizing at all. I'm trying to dismantle people's generalizations. People act like every human programmer is a deeply caring code artisan or something. Reality is far more cruel, of course.

Reality is that this is how a codebase evolves naturally when these requirements are expressed.

Asking an AI to create a database or something similar would not match the difficulty level of adding new features to Oracle.

These flags are needed because your many versions need to be supported combined with many configuration options. This is true no matter if the code is written by humans or AI.

Honestly, you have a fair and balanced point here, I agree