Post

Skill issue.

Cory Doctorow describes what has been my thesis about “AI” coding: it’s great for small productivity projects, it’s a source of crippling tech debt for production code and libraries.

P(aul) Frazee

@pfrazee.com

3 July

Genuinely though, this is accurate

Luka

@lukajcb.bsky.social

3 July

It's accurate that it's a skill issue, or what Cory originally stated is accurate?

P(aul) Frazee

@pfrazee.com

3 July

Accurate that it's a skill issue. Why is being a bit flippant about it but it's accurate. Good engineers know how to get good work out of llms; bad ones produce tech debt. Same as ever

bisaknosp

@bisaknosp.bsky.social

3 July

Can you be more precise? Give us an example of a recent decision you took, that the LLM will incorrectly advise the lesser engineer on.

P(aul) Frazee

@pfrazee.com

Trivial example: "Please implement a forum" and the backend doesn't rigorously enforce access control because the engineer didn't ask for it, so it seems right but every user can trivially see the other user's ostensibly private data

3/7/26, 6:25 pm0 reposts10 likes

Patrick Ohlson

@patrick-ohlson.ms-dot.net

3 July

*promptly stops using atproto for torrent storage* 👀😉❤