41–50 of 66 posts
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I can do everything the same without it, because I'm still not using it. Why would I want to be a guinea pig for the world's richest companies and also atrophy my brain.
uh oh you guys didn't realize you were guinea pigs for products that can permanently alter your mental health?
> It’s Still Your Code... AI maximalists will read this section and scoff. They’re already vibe coding everything and have little to no idea what the generated code looks like. This frames the argument like a dichotomy. And to be honest, using the Social Media "vibe-coding" as a strawman risks anchoring against something that's a mirage. There are plenty of good engineers getting good results whilst accepting code-ow…
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If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.
How is this different from saying “if you can’t do the job without the compiler, you can’t do the job”?
While I agree with the sentiment I fear this won’t last long. I already find myself, when Claude goes down for 15 minutes due to whatever, kind of throwing my hands up and taking a walk assuming it’ll be up by the time I get back. Usually it is.
If it went away for good I’d be able to code, but would I want to? I’d be kind of bummed in a way. Which is odd because I used to tout myself as someone who like programming but I think what I’ve discovered is I like building.
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If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.
Why? This doesn't follow at all.
> It’s Still Your Code... AI maximalists will read this section and scoff. They’re already vibe coding everything and have little to no idea what the generated code looks like. This frames the argument like a dichotomy. And to be honest, using the Social Media "vibe-coding" as a strawman risks anchoring against something that's a mirage. There are plenty of good engineers getting good results whilst accepting code-ow…
It's not a strawman. A lot of people are doing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job. Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.
How is this different from saying “if you can’t do the job without the compiler, you can’t do the job”?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same shit they've always been asking for, judging by what OpenAI and Anthropic are pumping out surrounding their models: bloated, buggy Electron apps that consume gigabytes of memory to display fucking <1kb of text. We are not witnessing better software, even from the people who have unlimited capital and unlimited access to frontier models and are true believers in its potential to replace engineers.
Better software means nearly nothing at the end of the day. The software that gets used is the metric that really matters. You can write 'perfect' software that runs at 100% efficient and never makes a mistake, but if no one ever downloads it and uses it, you've just engaged in a bout of intellectual masturbation. And honestly I've seen the 'write better software' people complain for years as Microsoft just absolutel…
I don't really know why you brought Microsoft up. I don't know anyone who thinks writing better software can displace Windows. Windows has absolute ecosystem capture, notably on the hardware front -- you can't write a better OS even if you want to because hardware vendors simply won't work with you, and even if you did write a better OS you have to contend with not having 30 years of software developed for it. Computers are increasingly falling into the domain of professionals (with smartphones displacing casual consumer usage), who need Photoshop, Excel, and all of the rest of professional tools and would put up with an inferior OS out of necessity, because the tools are more important than the OS.
Even then, Windows is an excellent piece of software, technically. It is handicapped by explicit anti-consumer decisions shoving things users don't want into it, but the kernel is hands down better than Linux's kernel, and the userspace is superior on technical merits if not user-friendliness merits. Windows has been going downhill in more recent years, but the gap between it and Linux is still massive.
Really, I don't know how Microsoft is your go-to example, when they are actually a producer of excellent software. Excel, the modern .NET ecosystem, C#, and Typescript are top-tier, and VSCode is perhaps the only software I've used that justifies being an Electron application, because it actually exposes the capability to completely customise every aspect of it and extend it with sandboxed extensions. To the extent people have grievances with Microsoft, it is largely because of deliberate monopolistic practices rather than the technical quality of their software.
I guess you are conceding that LLMs can't write good software, but are suggesting that good software doesn't matter. I think it does matter very much. In cases of monopoly control, people will begrudgingly use bad software, but they won't be loyal and you will bleed users over time as the frustrations build. But I think most critically, in cases where you don't already have monopoly control, nobody will use your bad software. This is why we haven't seen any vibe coded applications really taking the world by storm despite all the LLM hype. OpenAI and Anthropic can make you use their bad software because it's the gate to a useful proprietary tool, which is their real attraction, but Random Startup #482942 cannot make you use their bad software. Creating good software doesn't guarantee that Random Startup #482942 will succeed, given other market factors, but creating bad software guarantees they won't succeed.
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How is this different from saying “if you can’t do the job without the compiler, you can’t do the job”?
Is that wrong? My assembly programming sucks, but I can do it (slowly) if I need to. I'd expect most serious developers to have that level of knowledge.
Even knowledge of how to drop to C is fairly rare in much of development, and you know what? That’s okay. We all specialize in our own areas of this beast of a field.
> It’s Still Your Code... AI maximalists will read this section and scoff. They’re already vibe coding everything and have little to no idea what the generated code looks like. This frames the argument like a dichotomy. And to be honest, using the Social Media "vibe-coding" as a strawman risks anchoring against something that's a mirage. There are plenty of good engineers getting good results whilst accepting code-ow…