Live data from Hacker News

After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

atmoio.substack.com

91–100 of 652 posts

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#91
post #74

Karpathy coined the term vibecoding 11 months ago ( https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 ). It caused quite a stir - because not only was it was a radically new concept, but fully agentic coding had only become recently possible. You've been vibe coding for two years ??

The author is using the term to mean AI assisted coding. Thats been around for longer than the word vibe coding

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#92

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

I agree 100%. But as someone with 25 years of development experience, holy crap it's nice not having to do the boring parts as much anymore.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#93
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like weightlifting: sure you can use a forklift to do it, but if the goal is to build up your own strength, using the forklift isn’t going to get you there. This is the ultimate problem with AI in academia. We all inherently know that “no pain no gain” is true for physical tasks, but the same is true for learning. Struggling through the new concepts is essentially the point of it, not just the end result. Of cou…

Unlike weightlifting, the main goal of our jobs is not to lift heavy things, but develop a product that adds value to its users. Unfortunately, many sdevs don't understand it.

Yes but the goal of school is to lift heavy things, basically. You're trying to do things that are difficult (for you) but don't produce anything useful for anyone else. That's how you gain the ability to do useful things.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#94

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

I'm an external examiner for CS students in Denmark and I disagree with you. What we need in the industry is software engineers who can think for themselves, can interact with the business and understand it's needs, and, they need to know how computers work. What we get are mass produced coders who have been taught some outdated way of designing and building software that we need to hammer out of them. I don't partic…

> That they will know when to do abstractions

The only way to learn when abstractions are needed is to write code, hit a dead end, then try and abstract it. Over and over. With time, you will be able to start seeing these before you write code.

AI does not do abstractions well. From my experience, it completely fails to abstract anything unless you tell it to. Even when similar abstractions are already present. If you never learn when an abstraction is needed, how can you guide an AI to do the same well?

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#95

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

As a teacher, do you have any techniques to make sure students learn to write the code?

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an external examiner for CS students in Denmark and I disagree with you. What we need in the industry is software engineers who can think for themselves, can interact with the business and understand it's needs, and, they need to know how computers work. What we get are mass produced coders who have been taught some outdated way of designing and building software that we need to hammer out of them. I don't partic…

> I don't particularily care if people can write code like they work at the assembly line. I care [...] That they can deliver business value quickly. In my experience, people who talk about business value expect people to code like they work at the assembly line. Churn out features, no disturbances, no worrying about code quality, abstractions, bla bla. To me, your comment reads contradictory. You want initiative, an…

> people who talk about business value expect people to code like they work at the assembly line. Churn out features, no disturbances, no worrying about code quality, abstractions, bla bla.

That's typical misconception that "I'm an artist, let me rewrite in Rust" people often have. Code quality has a direct money equivalent, you just need to be able to justify it for people that pay you salary.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#97
post #27

AI is incredibly dangerous because it can do the simple things very well, which prevents new programmers from learning the simple things ("Oh, I'll just have AI generate it") which then prevents them from learning the middlin' and harder and meta things at a visceral level. I'm a CS teacher, so this is where I see a huge danger right now and I'm explicit with my students about it: you HAVE to write the code. You CAN'…

It’s like weightlifting: sure you can use a forklift to do it, but if the goal is to build up your own strength, using the forklift isn’t going to get you there. This is the ultimate problem with AI in academia. We all inherently know that “no pain no gain” is true for physical tasks, but the same is true for learning. Struggling through the new concepts is essentially the point of it, not just the end result. Of cou…

Misusing a forklift might injure the driver and a few others; but it is unlikely to bring down an entire electric grid, expose millions to fraud and theft, put innocent people in prison, or jeopardize the institutions of government.

There is more than one kind of leverage at play here.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only learn when I do things, not when I hear how they work. I think the teacher has the right idea.

Yes, I do too, but the point they were trying to make is that "learning how to write code" is not the point of CS education, but only a side effect.

A huge portion of the students in CS do intend the study precisely for writing code and the CS itself is more of a side effect.

Re: After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand

#100
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's your job. Exactly. AI assisted development isn't all or nothing. We as a group and as individuals need to figure out the right blend of AI and human.

Seriously. I've known for a very long time that our community has a serious problem with binary thinking, but AI has done more to reinforce that than anything I can think of in modern memory. Nearly every discussion I get into about AI is dead out of the gate because at least one person in the conversation has a binary view that it's either handwritten or vibe coded. They have an insanely difficult time imagining any…

I think you will find this is not specific to this community nor AI but any topic involving nuance and trade-offs without a right answer

For example, most political flamefests

Post reply on HN