February 7, 2026
Press F for Good Code
The silent death of Good Code
Good Code’s funeral: devs blame AI interns and “good enough” bosses
TLDR: An engineer says AI tools churn out acceptable but soulless code, and a hand-crafted rewrite proved how much quality matters. Comments split between “AI cements mediocrity” and “good code helps AI work better,” spotlighting a tug-of-war between craft and speed that affects software everyone uses.
The essay’s author mourns the fade-out of “Good Code™,” the carefully crafted stuff that makes software easy to read and fix. In a Modal case, an agent-assisted Rust rewrite of a Linux tool was… fine, but joyless; a teammate studied the system and hand‑rewrote it, and suddenly the code sang. Comments exploded. mixdup warned of enshittification: “We’re locking in mediocrity,” calling AI a forever-junior intern. gedy said the quiet part out loud: management never cared about quality, and AI just exposes it. The thread turned into a wake, with “RIP Good Code™,” bouquet-of-semicolons jokes, and people posting “Press F” for curly braces.
Not everyone is doomposting. nemothekid argued that good code actually makes AI tools better: cleaner structure speeds iteration and reduces mistakes when debugging. sibeliuss saluted the craft—understanding the kernel’s “why” made the rewrite flow. theK snarked we’ve swapped typing for “coding via conversation,” warning of diminishing returns. The vibe: artisans vs ship-it-now managers. Memes kept rolling—“AI intern writes 80%, ghosts 20%,” “Manager Bingo: ship, scale, shrug.” Whether Good Code is dead or just sleeping, the crowd isn’t ready to treat “good enough” as good.
Key Points
- •An agent-assisted C-to-Rust translation for a Linux kernel–integrated system produced functional but hard-to-read and maintain code.
- •A colleague’s manual Rust rewrite, informed by deep understanding of the kernel subsystem and original design, yielded significantly superior code.
- •The author finds coding agents increase productivity but rarely produce “Good Code,” which they define as readable, maintainable, and purpose-driven.
- •The experience rekindled the author’s enthusiasm for well-crafted code and highlighted the value of human insight over automated generation.
- •The article suggests a broader shift in software engineering toward accepting “good enough” outputs, prompting concern about the decline of code craftsmanship.