recently I gave AI a task to configure a software and the software didn’t have any docs of how it works only the source code. the agent went through all the files and generated a summary of how it works and why it’s not working for my particular scenario and suggested edits to my docker-compose.yml file. I couldn’t believe it since the bug was very hard to find and it used headless firefox to find why it wasn’t working.
made me realize do we still need documentation of how a software work when a AI can easily explain it?
For .one-off web page that is true. You and I might not like that under the hood it’s a mess but we have to accept that if it works anyway and nobody is going to need to change it, that’s fine.
Also the latest models don’t even make a mess any more.
There’s not really any such thing as a one off web page.
It’s eventually going to need to be updated or reused for something else.
The only exceptions being if your company goes under, force majure, or if you have something with the same requirements but choose to make the same thing again from scratch for no real reason , which is just being inefficient and unreasonable.
Yeah… I’m calling bullshit on that, all four projects I was handed was made by the latest models and it will continue being an issue for the foreseeable future. (see a previous comment of mine for reasoning: https://programming.dev/post/57569685/26398217)