Why AI Code Needs the Same Rigor We Should've Been Using All Along
On the gap between what we ask for and what gets built
This came out of a discussion on “Slop is not necessarily the future” . I commented that technical debt from sloppy code shows up too late to fix. someone replied: “Humans also write sloppy code.” That’s absolutely right, but it got me thinking about what’s actually different when AI is involved.
The debate about “AI writes sloppy code” versus “humans write sloppy code too” kind of misses it. It’s not about who writes worse code. It’s about how AI’s interpretation and human intention actually align .
I’ve been using AI to generate code pretty heavily. The problems I keep running into aren’t that different from the problems I’ve caused myself over the years. The difference is speed and volume. But there’s something specific that keeps nagging at me: when AI misunderstands what you want, it commits fully to the wrong interpretation . No clarifying questions. Just goes.
Two things I keep coming back to: the gap between what you meant and what got built, and the fact that you can’t predict which code will stick around.
The Gap: When AI Picks What It Thinks Is Reasonable (But Not What You Meant)