Someone Else's Code
You were never reading that library's code either.
I keep catching myself confused by tech folks who don’t want to use AI to code.
I get liking coding. I’ve spent plenty of nights watching something come together, tweaking it until it’s right. But when people say they don’t trust AI-written code, that they need extra time to review it, I don’t follow the logic. Why is this different from every other line of code you didn’t write yourself?
As an engineer I’ve used code from people I know nothing about. No insight into their skills, their habits, whether they tested anything. I trusted it anyway. Same with every library, every open source tool. I assumed someone built it to solve their own problem, which meant they were using it, which meant it had at least been through minimal testing. I never did a detailed review. I had one colleague who rewrote base classes for performance. He was the exception, not the rule.
So why would AI be held to a higher standard than the anonymous library author?
If anything, it’s the opposite. Anything I build now, I build test cases alongside it. There’s no reason to skimp anymore. AI catches cases I never would have thought to test for myself. I trust random libraries more now, because I’m finally testing them properly too.
Somewhere in this I went over to the dark side. I don’t feel the need to type every line anymore. Designing something and watching it come together faster than I could type it gets me the same dopamine hit, just sooner, and more often.
I’ve scrapped the same product three times recently. Each evening I’d implement a version, start testing, and by the end I’d have new design thoughts and a clearer view of my own blind spots. Each night still produced a working prototype I could evaluate. What used to take weeks to learn, I’m learning in days.
None of this means I hand AI a list and walk away. I work in features. Finish one, PR it, review the code, have a model or two do a second pass. I stay out of the black box. But writing the actual thousand lines myself? I don’t need that anymore. I trust AI to build what I need exactly as much as I trusted every library author and open source maintainer who came before it.
I don’t trust easily. Ask anyone who’s known me more than a week. But I never expected libraries to be perfect either. I expected them to be good enough, and I expected to find out where they weren’t. AI gets the same deal.
Little Old Lady & The Inner Chamber