C++ creator says AI writes rubbish code, senior coders preferring retirement instead of dealing with it

AI coding tools like Claude Code and Codex have changed the way coders work, with many companies pushing for more AI written code. However, according to the creator of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup, the AI written code is so bad that senior developers are retiring instead of dealing with it.

In Short

• C++ creator says AI code is rubbish, full of bugs
• He says senior coders are retiring instead of using AI to write code
• His comments come at a time when companies are pushing for more AI written code

Over the past year, AI has changed the way we work, particularly when it comes to coding. “Vibe coding” – the use of AI to write code – has become increasingly popular, and even the norm in some cases. Companies are now pushing for employees to use tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex to write code. However, Bjarne Stroustrup, who created the programming language C++, believes that the result of this is so bad, that many senior coders are choosing to retire altogether.

C++ is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world, and Bjarne has worked in programming language design for decades. But it seems that he is skeptical about AI being used to code in his domain. He told Ryan Peterman, “I think that in the field I’m mostly interested in [programming language design] – code will still be written by humans, and they will use abstraction.”

Peterman insisted that so far, at least in this field, AI-written code doesn’t seem to do the job. He added, “The examples I’ve seen of attempts for AI to generate code in this domain have not been successful.”

The programming guru hinted that the AI-generated code is almost rubbish and full of issues. Bjarne Stroustrup said, “[AI tools] generate more bugs, more security holes, they have bloated code which pessimizes again because you use more memory, and it's hard to validate.”

Coders will retire but not fix AI code

The C++ creator claimed that the situation was so bad that senior developers simply didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The problem, Bjarne Stroustrup, says is that engineers need to verify code made by AI before it can be implemented.

And some coders have decided to just retire instead of having to put up with it. He said, “The senior developers that would be needed to validate it — I’ve seen some of them starting to retire, because they don’t want to deal with the validation of something that changes every time you make a change in your prompts.”

He contrasted this with human-written code, saying a person usually makes a localised change whose effects can be traced more easily. “When a human makes a change, it’ll make a change that’s localised, and you can look for the effects of that localised change. If an AI writes it, you don’t actually know where it’s changed. You have to try and figure that out.” he said.

His remarks come at a time when AI tools are increasingly being used to write code. Previously NodeJS creator Ryan Dahl had claimed that the era of humans writing code was over. Last night, Google claimed that its Antigravity 2.0 coding platform was able to create a new operating system within 12 hours by using 93 separate sub-agents.

And companies are using AI. Anthropic has already stated in the past that Claude writes almost 90 per cent of the company’s code. Companies like Meta and Amazon are pushing employees to use more AI to write code, while they cut thousands of jobs.

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