Beware the spaceships

In this article, Swizec Teller discusses the challenges of using AI for large-scale code migrations, specifically migrating a design system from Bootstrap to Tailwind. He describes the 'spaceship problem' where AI generates a seemingly perfect solution (the spaceship) but the details are off, requiring significant manual cleanup. He shares his experience with a 22,000-line rewrite and a 12,000-line lint fix, noting that while AI excels at mechanical translation, it struggles with conceptual leaps. He advises that while AI can speed up initial work, engineers must be prepared to review and refine the output, and sometimes discard it entirely if it's not the right approach.