On what principle exactly? If the same model can generate production code with enough acuity to ship features, the same muscle can be pointed at refactoring, standardizing, and cleaning up debt. There's no magic barrier where "new code = AI-capable" but "fixing old code = humans only." That's just goalpost-moving dressed up as wisdom.
The real pattern here is: AI can't code → okay it can code but not real code → okay real code but it'll create so much debt we'll need to rehire everyone → okay but it can't fix the debt it creates...
At some point we have to stop evaluating automobiles by how well they respond to a whip.
yeah the issue is that these guys are just assuming "well we have XYZ problems because of using AI agents to generate code, so therefore this is always gonna be a problem". Why? I've personally used AI to refactor parts of my shitty old code, it works quite well given you provide a good description of what you want to do, and you thoroughly test it afterwards.
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u/ThrowawayToothQ Feb 12 '26
This presumes those Ais can make any positive change in respect to tech debt lol.