Ask HN: What are some engineering practices you wish would come back?

5 pointsdhruv_ahuja3mo ago2 comments

It feels like with AI, a lot of engineering practices that were de-facto standard have somehow been phased out. Or atleast that's the emotion I can see on reddit or on few threads in HN.

That led me to this question, what are some practices you feel have been phased out over time, that should make a comeback?

One off the top of my head: startups or even large orgs in general not hiring junior engineers. Who will teach other engineers in coming years if we don't train juniors today?

2 comments

manidoraisamy3mo ago

The ones that are gone are comments/documentation in code, unit testing, design patterns, datamodel/db design. I am happy documentation is gone. But I miss design, especially db design. AI generates SQL/code with no regard for backward compatibility or future maintenance.

dhruv_ahujaOP3mo ago

I see. Do you have any examples where the design was just egregious?

From my experience generating db models/SQL schema at my last job, it did a fine job based on existing patterns and the outlined requirements. Point to note, we did optimise our AI prompts and LLM rules a lot, to the point we were able to get end to end unit tested, functional PRs out rather quickly

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