Ask HN: How to deal with shipping AI-written code you don't understand?

Hacker News Top 10/19/26, 11:24 AM News

ai-coding software-engineering developer-culture hacker-news code-quality discussion

Summary

A Hacker News discussion sparked by a Meta engineer's LinkedIn post questioning the growing practice of shipping AI-written code without fully understanding it, asking how developers cope with this new standard.

I saw this LinkedIn post from a Meta engineer and it resonated with me:<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ali-hamie_im-an-engineer-at-meta-and-i-never-felt-share-7517317918666211328-7C8N" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ali-hamie_im-an-engineer-at-m...</a><p>> I'm an engineer at Meta and I never felt this uncomfortable doing my job. I'm writing code these days and it all feels like a black box. This new standard of shipping with AI is moving so fast that if we're going to spend our time checking each line of code, it's going to take forever. That means you can end up with systems you've built where you don't truly understand how all the code works. You understand the high level, but not every detail. And maybe this is becoming the new standard. It goes against every instinct of being a software engineer. I'm used to understanding what I'm building. Now I'm trying to figure out how much I need to understand before I'm comfortable moving forward. Are other engineers feeling this too?<p>How are you handling this?

Original Article

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