Heaps of Mediocre

When I was a young engineer, I programmed on a test system that provided 128 lines of program space.

That was it. You had 128 lines of code. Make it work.

By the way, that smart light bulb that Alexa can turn on and off? That has about 25,000 lines of code. That’s 200x more code. In your light bulb.

At first, I thought, “What can I do with 128 lines of code?”

However, like many constraints, that restriction turned out not to be so restrictive. As I gained experience, I realized that I could do everything I needed in 128 lines. It required creativity, requirements trade-offs, and a deep understanding of how the system worked, but I always found a way.

The end result was a program with surgical precision and efficiency.

Today, I am using AI to write code. Heaps of it. You should be, too. It allows me to get so much more done, and for many things, it allows me to create in areas where I’m not an expert.

But it’s the opposite of surgical precision and efficiency. It’s generating heaps of functional, but mediocre code.

Oh sure, I can (and do, sometimes) take the AI-generated code and work on it to make it better.

But more requires more.

Where’s that balance between making it excellent versus leaving it mediocre?

That’s one of the jobs for us humans.