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Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

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Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#3

Post by stavros »

I've come to view LLMs as a consulting firm where, for each request, I have a 50% chance of getting either an expert or an intern writing my code, and there's no way to tell which.

Sometimes I accept this, and I vibe-code, when I don't care about the result. When I do care about the result, I have to read every line myself. Since reading code is harder than writing it, this takes longer, but LLMs have made me too lazy to write code now, so that's probably the only alternative that works.

I have to say, though, the best thing I've tried is Cursor's autocomplete, which writes 3-4 lines for you. That way, I can easily verify that the code does what I want, while still reaping the benefit of not having to look up all the APIs and function signatures.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#4

Post by mycentstoo »

I believe choosing a well known problem space in a well known language certainly influenced a lot of the behavior. AIs usefulness is correlated strongly with its training data and there’s no doubt been a significant amount of data about both the problem space and Python.

I’d love to see how this compares when either the problem space is different or the language/ecosystem is different.

It was a great read regardless!

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#5

Post by kaptainscarlet »

stavros wrote: post #3

I've come to view LLMs as a consulting firm where, for each request, I have a 50% chance of getting either an expert or an intern writing my code, and there's no way to tell which. Sometimes I accept this, and I vibe-code, when I don't care about the result. When I do care about the result, I have to read every line myself. Since reading code is harder than writing it, this takes longer, but LLMs have made me too laz…

I've also had a similar experience. I have become too lazy since I started vibe-coding. My coding has transitioned from coder to code reviewer/fixer vey quickly. Overall I feel like it's a good thing because the last few years of my life has been a repetition of frontend components and api endpoints, which to me has become too monotonous so I am happy to have AI take over that grunt work while I supervise.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#7

Post by stavros »

kaptainscarlet wrote: post #5
stavros wrote: post #3

I've come to view LLMs as a consulting firm where, for each request, I have a 50% chance of getting either an expert or an intern writing my code, and there's no way to tell which. Sometimes I accept this, and I vibe-code, when I don't care about the result. When I do care about the result, I have to read every line myself. Since reading code is harder than writing it, this takes longer, but LLMs have made me too laz…

I've also had a similar experience. I have become too lazy since I started vibe-coding. My coding has transitioned from coder to code reviewer/fixer vey quickly. Overall I feel like it's a good thing because the last few years of my life has been a repetition of frontend components and api endpoints, which to me has become too monotonous so I am happy to have AI take over that grunt work while I supervise.

Yeah, exactly the same for me. It's tiring writing the same CRUD endpoints a thousand times, but that's how useful products are made.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#8

Post by numpad0 »

I don't feel good doing it, but is anyone else feeling not capitalizing text, maintaining a slightly abrasive attitude, and consciously stealing credits, yield better results from coding agents? e.g. "i want xxx implemented, can you do", "ok you do" than "I'm wondering if..." etc.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#9

Post by Insanity »

mycentstoo wrote: post #4

I believe choosing a well known problem space in a well known language certainly influenced a lot of the behavior. AIs usefulness is correlated strongly with its training data and there’s no doubt been a significant amount of data about both the problem space and Python. I’d love to see how this compares when either the problem space is different or the language/ecosystem is different. It was a great read regardless!

100% this. I tried haskelling with LLMs and it’s performance is worse compared to Go.

Although in fairness this was a year ago on GPT 3.5 IIRC

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#10

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

numpad0 wrote: post #8

I don't feel good doing it, but is anyone else feeling not capitalizing text, maintaining a slightly abrasive attitude, and consciously stealing credits, yield better results from coding agents? e.g. "i want xxx implemented, can you do", "ok you do" than "I'm wondering if..." etc.

There is so much subjective placebo with “prompt engineering” that anyone pushing any one thing like this just shows me they haven’t used it enough yet. No offense, just seeing it everywhere.

Better results if you… tip the AI, offer it physical touch, you need to say the words “go slow and take a deep breath first”…

It’s a subjective system without control testing. Humans are definitely going to apply religion, dogma, and ritual to it.

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