Quality of AI Code

A developer reports that switching from unstructured "vibe coding" to spec-driven development, in which an LLM generates code from a carefully maintained specification file, produced more reliable and cheaper results after early attempts yielded serious bugs. The developer says AI-assisted work improved both the quality and performance of the program and made the code easier to maintain by offloading some cognitive effort. The conclusion is that spec-driven AI-assisted coding, done with care by someone who knows what they are doing, can create or improve high-quality code.

Code that is written by AI generated by LLMs has had a bad reputation —it has bugs, is unreliable. And vibe-coded software has been thought to be even worse: it is felt to be unusable slop. But while AI coding does have drawbacks, it can be used to create high-quality software. When I first started trying to use AI, I ended up with some pretty terrible bugs from vibe coding. But I decided to move to spec-driven development where an LLM generates code from a carefully-maintained specification file. This ended up being more reliable and also cheaper . • With AI, I improved the quality of my program, and also its performance. • I made the code easier to maintain, as I could "offload" some of the cognitive effort. • Spec-driven AI-assisted coding, done with care and thought by someone who knows what they are doing, can be used to create or improve high-quality code.