Hi all! I’m a CS grad student building a few apps, and I’ve noticed something interesting. Whenever I revisit my code after a while, I often find files with thousands of lines. My first instinct is usually to ask Claude to split them into smaller, reusable components for better maintainability. But then I started wondering: if Claude or other AI coding agents can still understand and modify the code well enough to implement what I ask, does it matter as much if the codebase is messy? I’d be curious to hear how others think about this. Do traditional software engineering practices like modularity, reusability, and maintainability still matter as much when AI agents are doing more of the coding? One thought I had is that a more modular codebase might reduce token usage and make it easier for agents to work with the code, but I don’t have any data on that. submitted by /u/Bright_Elevator3675
Originally posted by u/Bright_Elevator3675 on r/ClaudeCode