Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck

> Maybe it’s imposter syndrome though to think it wasn’t already being done before the rise of LLMs

It may well have been happening before the rise of LLMs, but the volume was a lot more manageable

Now it's an unrestricted firehose of crap that there just not enough good devs to wrangle

Developers have always loved the new and shiny. Heck, getting developers not to rewrite an application in their new favorite framework is a tough sell.

LLM “vibe coding” is another continuation of this “new hotness”, and while the more seasoned developers may have learned to avoid it, that’s not the majority view.

CEOs and C-suites have always been disconnected from the first order effects of their cost-cutting edicts, and vibe coding is no different in that regard. They see the ten dollars an hour they spend on LLMs as a bargain if they can hire a $30 an hour junior programmer instead of a $150 an hour senior programmer.

They will continue to pursue cost-cutting, and the advent of vibe coding matches exactly what they care about: software produced for a fraction of the cost.

Our problem — or the problem of the professionals - is that we have not been successful in translating the inherent problems with the CEOs approach to a change in how the C-suite operates. We have not successfully pursuaded them that higher quality software = more sales, or lower liability, or lower cost maintenance, and that partially because we as an industry have eschewed those for “move fast and break things”. Vibe coding is “Move Fast and Break Things” writ large.

“We typically making very very detailed plans” - this is writing code in English without tests. Admittedly, since generating code is faster, you get faster feedback. Still, I do not think it as efficient as an incremental, test driven approach. Here you can optimize early on for the feedback loop.

What I've seen is exactly this, that LLMs give the most leverage to small and highly capable teams of devs. You need to be highly capable in order to get good output from LLMs, and large teams still have the coordination overhead that slows them down. LLMs supercharge the small teams that were already good.

I woke up saying “no” into my pillow over and over again this morning about this problem.

There are two ways forward:

- Those of us that have been vibing revert to having LLMs generate code in small bits that our brains are fast enough to analyze and process, but LLMs are increasingly optimized to create code that is better and better, making it seem like this is a poor use of time, since “LLMs will just rewrite it in a few months.”

- We just have a hell of a time, in a bad way, some of us losing our jobs, because the code looks well-thought out but wasn’t, at ever increasing scale.

I have wavered over the past months in my attitude after having used it to much success in some cases and having gotten in over my head in beautiful crap in the more important ones.

I have (too) many years of experience, and have existed on a combination of good enough, clear enough code with consideration for the future along with a decent level of understanding, trust in people, and distrust in scenarios.

But this situation is flogging what remains of me. Developers are being mentored by something that cannot mentor and yet it does, and there is no need for me, not in a way that matters to them.

I believe that I’ll be fired, and when I am, I may take one or both of two roads:

1. I’ll continue to use LLMs on my own hoping that something will be created that feeds my family and pays the bills, eventually taking another job where I get fired again, because my mind isn’t what it was.

2. I do one of the few manual labor jobs that require no reasoning and are accepting of a slow and unreliable neurodivergent, if there are any; I don’t think there truly are.

I’ve been close to #2 before. I learned that almost everything that is dear to you relies on your functioning a certain way. I believe that I can depend on God to be there for me, but beyond that, I know that it’s on me. I’m responsible for what I can do.

LLMs and those AIs that come after them to do the same- they can’t fill the hole in others’ lives the way that you can, even if you’re a piece of shit like I am.

So, maybe LLMs write puzzling code as they puzzle out our inane desires and needs. Maybe we lose our jobs. Maybe we hobble along slowly creating decent code. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you be you and be your best, and support others.