Discussion
Computer Science > Software Engineering
rfw300: Super interesting study. One curious thing I've noticed is that coding agents tend to increase the code complexity of a project, but simultaneously massively reduce the cost of that code complexity.If a module becomes unsustainably complex, I can ask Claude questions about it, have it write tests and scripts that empirically demonstrate its behavior, and worse comes to worst, rip out that code entirely and replace it with something better in a fraction of the time it used to take.That's not to say complexity isn't bad anymore, and the paper's findings on diminishing returns on velocity hold up. But while the newest (post-Nov. 2025) models often make inadvisable design decisions, they rarely do things that are outright wrong or hallucinated anymore. That makes them much more useful for cleaning up old messes.
PeterStuer: Interesting from an historical perspective. But data from 4/2025? Might as well have been last century.
joshribakoff: Bad code has real world consequences. Its not limited to having to rewrite it. The cost might also include sanctions, lost users, attrition, and other negative consequences you don’t just measure in dev hours
SR2Z: Right, but that cost is also incurred by human-written code that happens to have bugs.In theory experienced humans introduce less bugs. That sounds reasonable and believable, but anyone who's ever been paid to write software knows that finding reliable humans is not an easy task unless you're at a large established company.
verdverm: There was a recent study posted here that showed AI introduces regressions at an alarming rate, all but one above 50%, which indicates they spend a lot of time fixing their own mistakes. You've probably seen them doing this kind of thing, making one change that breaks another, going and adjusting that thing, not realizing that's making things worse.
MeetingsBrowser: This only helps if you notice the code is bad. Especially in overlay complex code, you have to really be paying attention to notice when a subtle invariant is broken, edge case missed, etc.Its the same reason a junior + senior engineer is about as fast as a senior + 100 junior engineers. The senior's review time becomes the bottleneck and does not scale.And even with the latest models and tooling, the quality of the code is below what I expect from a junior. But you sure can get it fast.
matt_heimer: Yes, it's not surprising that warning and complexity increased at a higher rate when paired with increased velocity. Increased velocity == increased lines of code.Does the study normalize velocity between the groups by adjusting the timeframes so that we could tell if complexity and warnings increased at a greater rate per line of code added in the AI group?I suspect it would, since I've had to simplify AI generated code on several occasions but right now the study just seems to say that the larger a code base grows the more complex it gets which is obvious.
ex-aws-dude: That was my thought as well, because obviously complexity increases when a project grows regardless of AI
AstroBen: Depends how you're measuring complexity I suppose.> Per SonarQube (Campbell, 2018), this metric quantifies code understandability and aligns better with modern coding practices than classic cyclomatic complexityWould need to know how SonarQube is rating it.
bensyverson: Yeah, I have a more complex project I'm working on with Claude, but it's not that Claude is making it more complex; it's just that it's so complex I wouldn't attempt it without Claude.
happycube: I think the gist of it still applies to even Claude Code w/Opus 4.6.It's basically outsourcing to mediocre programmers - albeit very fast ones with near-infinite patience and little to no ego.
Miraste: It doesn't map well to a mediocre human programmer, I think. It operates in a much more jagged world between superhuman, and inhuman stupidity.
chris_money202: Now someone do a research study where a summary of this research paper is in the AGENTS.md and let’s see if the overall outcomes are better
