When I worked at Apple, I remember seeing code that was 15 years old. Every file had a comment at the top with the date and the author’s name. You’d open a file and read through it, sometimes touching a feature no one had touched in a decade.
Everything felt very permanent, like
junior devs/fresh grads couldn’t tell you how any of the stuff they “build” works anyways but what I’ve found shocking is senior level devs that have either simply forgotten how the code works or just don’t care anymore. They fully embraced and drank the Agentic Kool-Aid that they’ve allowed their skill set to dwindle. And I’d say the vast majority of those devs just don’t care anymore.
Reject their MRs. Point out the shit code. Find the shit they missed and didn’t read. Force them to make it digestible and understandable. I am sure my team isn’t happy when I review their MRs because I always catch the shit they missed. Use the clankers, fine, but you better god damn know every single line. What? Can’t do that? That’s too hard? No one reads every line? Bruh, I do. Every. Single. Fucking. Line. Don’t use the clanker if you can’t do that. No clanker privileges for you. Clankers are fucking magic, but they aren’t a replacement for understanding.
I’ve had a long career of quickly grokking large systems. Reading endless amounts of code. Reading my dependencies’ code. Reading my dependencies’ dependencies’ code. The job, software engineering, the vast majority of the time is maintenance, growth on top of an existing thing. You must read code. You must understand how everything works under the hood so that you can properly model shit. That is the fucking job. Clankers write a lot of code. git gud at reading it because it will absolutely slip in some sloppy shit you do not want going to prod.
Reject their MRs. Point out the shit code. Find the shit they missed and didn’t read. Force them to make it digestible and understandable. I am sure my team isn’t happy when I review their MRs because I always catch the shit they missed. Use the clankers, fine, but you better god damn know every single line. What? Can’t do that? That’s too hard? No one reads every line? Bruh, I do. Every. Single. Fucking. Line. Don’t use the clanker if you can’t do that. No clanker privileges for you. Clankers are fucking magic, but they aren’t a replacement for understanding.
I’ve had a long career of quickly grokking large systems. Reading endless amounts of code. Reading my dependencies’ code. Reading my dependencies’ dependencies’ code. The job, software engineering, the vast majority of the time is maintenance, growth on top of an existing thing. You must read code. You must understand how everything works under the hood so that you can properly model shit. That is the fucking job. Clankers write a lot of code. git gud at reading it because it will absolutely slip in some sloppy shit you do not want going to prod.