Earlier quoted context omitted.
your credentials shouldn't be in your codebase to begin with!
.env files are a thing in tons of codebases
but thats at runtime, secrets are going to be deployed in a secure manner after the code is released
Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
61–70 of 259 posts
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s a popular style before gen ai and the training process of LLMs picked up on that.
That’s not how LLMs work, it’s part of the reinforcement learning or SFT dataset, data labelers would have written or generated tons of examples using this and other patterns (all the emoji READMEs for example) that the models emulate. The early ones had very formulaic essay style outputs that always ended with “in conclusion”, lots of the same kind of bullet lists, and a love of adjectives and delving, all of which…
Maybe I was being imprecise, but I’m not sure what you mean by “not how LLMs work” - discovering patterns of how humans write is exactly the signal they are trained against. Either explicitly curated like SFT or coaxed out during RLHF, no?
It could even have been picked up in pretraining and then rewarded during rlhf when the output domain was being refined; I haven’t used enough LLMs before post training to know what step it usually becomes noticeable.
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've been giving our work away to each other for free as open source to help improve each other's productivity for 30+ years now and that's only made our profession more valuable.
I see little proof open source has resulted in higher wages and not the fact that everything is being digitized and the subsequent demand for such people to assist in such.
I'm not sure how I can prove it, but ~25 years ago building software without open source sucked. You had to build everything from scratch! It took months to get even the most basic things up and running.
I think open source is the single most important productivity boost to our industry that's ever existed. Automated testing is a close second.
Google, Facebook, many others would not have existed without open source to build on.
And those giants and others like them that were enabled by open source employed a TON of people, at competitive rates that greatly increased our salaries.
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
.env files are a thing in tons of codebases
but thats at runtime, secrets are going to be deployed in a secure manner after the code is released
.env files are used to develop as well, for some things like PayPal u dont have to change the credentials, you just enable sandbox mode. If I had some LLM attached to my codebase, it would be able to read those credentials from the .env file.
This has nothing to do with deployment. I never talked about deployment.
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see little proof open source has resulted in higher wages and not the fact that everything is being digitized and the subsequent demand for such people to assist in such.
I'm not sure how I can prove it, but ~25 years ago building software without open source sucked . You had to build everything from scratch! It took months to get even the most basic things up and running. I think open source is the single most important productivity boost to our industry that's ever existed. Automated testing is a close second. Google, Facebook, many others would not have existed without open source…
even if that's true it's clear enough AI will reduce the demand for swe
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#66we've never seen a profession drive themselves so aggressively to irrelevance. software engineering will always exist, but it's amazing the pace to which pressure against the profession is rising. 2026 will be a very happy new year indeed for those paying the salaries. :)
We've been giving our work away to each other for free as open source to help improve each other's productivity for 30+ years now and that's only made our profession more valuable.
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Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
but thats at runtime, secrets are going to be deployed in a secure manner after the code is released
.env files are used to develop as well, for some things like PayPal u dont have to change the credentials, you just enable sandbox mode. If I had some LLM attached to my codebase, it would be able to read those credentials from the .env file. This has nothing to do with deployment. I never talked about deployment.
If you have your PayPal creds in your repository, you are doing it wrong.
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#68Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see little proof open source has resulted in higher wages and not the fact that everything is being digitized and the subsequent demand for such people to assist in such.
I'm not sure how I can prove it, but ~25 years ago building software without open source sucked . You had to build everything from scratch! It took months to get even the most basic things up and running. I think open source is the single most important productivity boost to our industry that's ever existed. Automated testing is a close second. Google, Facebook, many others would not have existed without open source…
Indeed it did; I remember those times. All else being equal I still think SWE salaries on average would of been higher if we kept it like that given basic economics - there would of been a lot less people capable of doing it but the high ROI automation opportunities would of still been there. The fact that "it sucked" usually creates more scarcity on the supply side; which all being equal means higher wages and in our capitalist society - status. Other professions that are older as to the parent comment already know this and don't see SWE as very "street smart" disrupting themselves. I've seen articles recently like "at least we aren't in coding" from law, accounting, etc an an anecdote to this.
With AI at least locally I'm seeing the opposite now - less hiring, less wage pressure and in social circles a lot less status when I mention I'm a SWE (almost sympathy for my lot vs respect only 5 years ago). While I don't care for the status aspect, although I do care for my ability to earn money, some do.
At least locally inflation adjusted in my city SWE wages bought more and were higher in general compared to others in the 90's-2000's than on wards (ex big tech). Partly because this difficulty and low level knowledge meant only very skilled people could participate.
Re: Professional software developers don't vibe, they control
#70The title is doing a lot of work here. What resonated with me is the shift from “writing code” to “steering systems” rather than the hype framing. Senior devs already spend more time constraining, reviewing, and shaping outcomes than typing syntax. AI just makes that explicit. The real skill gap isn’t prompt cleverness, it’s knowing when the agent is confidently wrong and how to fence it in with tests, architecture,…
Is anyone else getting more mentally exhausted by this? I get more done, but I also miss the relaxing code typing in the middle of the process.
For me it's the opposite, I'm wasting less energy over debugging silly bugs and fighting/figuring out some annoying config.
But it does feel less fulfilling I suppose.