Engineer Used AI as a Hypothesis Generator, Not an Authority, to Decode 60K-Line Codebase

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A software engineer inherited a 60,000-line undocumented C++17 codebase after a colleague departed, with a mandate to safely modify it within a quarter. Rather than trusting an AI to rewrite or explain code authoritatively, the engineer used a large language model solely as a reading aid, treating every output as an unverified hypothesis. A structured 'hypothesis ledger' tracked each AI claim alongside a planned verification method and outcome, using tools like grep, gdb, and test builds to confirm or reject assertions. After three weeks, roughly one in four substantive AI claims proved wrong or incomplete, reinforcing the workflow's core principle of keeping the model away from anything entering the repository unverified. The approach highlights a practical middle ground: leveraging AI where errors are cheap and detectable, while reserving human judgment and deterministic tools for anything that carries real consequences.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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