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Automatic Programming

antirez.com

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101–110 of 257 posts

Re: Automatic Programming

#101

Post by bsza »

9dev wrote: post #57
noodletheworld wrote: post #12

Vibe Engineering. Automatic Programming. “We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication..." Everyone seems to want to invent a new word for 'programming with AI' because 'vibe coding' seems to have come to equate to 'being rubbish and writing AI slop'. ...buuuut, it doesn't really matter what you call it does it? If the result is slop, no amount of branding is going to make it not slop. People are not…

That's kind of Salvatore's point though; programming without some kind of AI contribution will become rare over time, like people writing assembly by hand is rare now. So the distinction becomes meaningless.

There is no perfect black or perfect white, so the distinction is meaningless, everything is gray.

Re: Automatic Programming

#102

Post by [deleted] »

motoboi wrote: post #93

We maybe witnessing the last generation of master software artisans like antirez. This is beautiful to see, their mastery harnessing the power of the intelligent machine tools to design, understand and build. This is like seeing a master of image & light like michelangelo receiving a camera, photoshop and a printer. It's an exponential elevation of the art. But to become a master like michelangelo one had to dedicate…

[deleted]

Re: Automatic Programming

#103

Post by Thanemate »

sneak wrote: post #88
norir wrote: post #61

> I'm a programmer, and I use automatic programming. The code I generate in this way is mine. My code, my output, my production. I, and you, can be proud. I disagree. The code you wrote is a collaboration with the model you used. To frame it this way, you are taking credit for the work the model did on your behalf. There is a difference between I wrote this code entirely by myself and I wrote the code with a partner.…

Prompting the AI is indeed “do[ing] it yourself”. There’s nobody else here, and this code is original and never existed before, and would not exist here and now if I hadn’t prompted this machine.

Sure. But the sentence "I am a programmer" doesn't fit with prompting, just as much as me prompting for a drawing that resembles something doesn't make me a painter.

Re: Automatic Programming

#104

Post by Thanemate »

nvlled wrote: post #85
jpnc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it feel to see all your programming heroes turn into Linkedin-style influencers?

I don't see Carmack or Torvalds doing this, so it's all good (for now).

The closest we've gone with Torvalds was using LLM's for non-important tasks.

Re: Automatic Programming

#105

Post by tiwz171 »

motoboi wrote: post #93

We maybe witnessing the last generation of master software artisans like antirez. This is beautiful to see, their mastery harnessing the power of the intelligent machine tools to design, understand and build. This is like seeing a master of image & light like michelangelo receiving a camera, photoshop and a printer. It's an exponential elevation of the art. But to become a master like michelangelo one had to dedicate…

[flagged]

Re: Automatic Programming

#106

Post by catdog »

RobinL wrote: post #11
antirez wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So when there is a bug / outage / error, due to "automatic programming" you are first in line and ready to accept accountability when it all goes wrong in production? Absolutely yes. Automatic programming does not mean software developers are no longer accountable for their errors. Also because you can use AP in order to do ways more QA efforts than possible in the past. If you decide to just add things without a r…

Agree. Much of the value of devs is understanding the thing they're working on so they know what to do when it breaks, and knows what new features it can easily support. Doesn't matter whether they wrote the code, a colleague wrote it, or an AI.

Yep writing the code might have gotten a little bit easier but was never was the hard part to begin with.

Re: Automatic Programming

#107

Post by keyle »

aglavine wrote: post #52
AdamN wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waterfall can work great when: 1/ the focus is long-term both in terms of knowing that she company can take a few years to get the thing live but also that it will be around for many more years, 2/ the people writing the spec and the code are largely the same people. Agile was really pushing to make sure companies could get software live before they died (number 1) and to remedy the anti-pattern that appeared with nu…

No. Agile core is the feedback loop. I can't believe people still don't get it. Feedback from reality is always faster than guessing on the air. Waterfall is never great. The only time when you need something else than Agile is when lives are at stake, you need there formal specifications and rigorous testing. SDD allows better output than traditional programming. It is similar to waterfall in the sense that the mode…

I've live through both eras...

Agile, hardly any planning, write 3 times.

Waterfall, weeks of planning, write 3 times anyway.

The point is, people don't know what they want or are asking for, until it's in front of them. No system is perfect, but waterfall leads to bigger disasters.

Re: Automatic Programming

#108

Post by keyle »

norir wrote: post #61

> I'm a programmer, and I use automatic programming. The code I generate in this way is mine. My code, my output, my production. I, and you, can be proud. I disagree. The code you wrote is a collaboration with the model you used. To frame it this way, you are taking credit for the work the model did on your behalf. There is a difference between I wrote this code entirely by myself and I wrote the code with a partner.…

The line gets blurrier the more auto-complete you use.

Agentic programming is at the end of the day a higher level auto complete, with extremely fuzzy matching on English.

But when you write a block and you let copilot complete 3, 4, 5 statements. Are you really writing the code?

Re: Automatic Programming

#109

Post by rellfy »

I arrived at a very similar conclusion since trying Claude Code with Opus 4.5 (a huge paradigm shift in terms of tech and tools). I've been calling it "zen coding", where you treat the codebase like a zen garden. You maintain a mental map of the codebase, spec everything before prompting for the implementation, and review every diff line by line. The AI is a tool to implement the system design, not the system designer itself (at least not for now...).

The distinction drawn between both concepts matters. The expertise is in knowing what to spec and catching when the output deviates from your design. Though, the tech is so good now that a carefully reviewed spec will be reliably implemented by a state-of-the-art LLM. The same LLM that produces mediocre code for a vague request will produce solid code when guided by someone who understands the system deeply enough to constrain it. This is the difference between vibe coding and zen coding.

Zen coders are masters of their craft; vibe coders are amateurs having fun.

And to be clear, nothing wrong with being an amateur and having fun. I "vibe code" several areas with AI that are not really coding, but other fields where I don't have professional knowledge in. And it's great, because LLMs try to bring you closer to the top of human knowledge on any field, so as an amateur it is incredible to experience it.

Re: Automatic Programming

#110

Post by motoboi »

tiwz171 wrote: post #105
motoboi wrote: post #93

We maybe witnessing the last generation of master software artisans like antirez. This is beautiful to see, their mastery harnessing the power of the intelligent machine tools to design, understand and build. This is like seeing a master of image & light like michelangelo receiving a camera, photoshop and a printer. It's an exponential elevation of the art. But to become a master like michelangelo one had to dedicate…

[flagged]

michelangelo was an image master. He used paint and brush because those were the advanced tools of the time. His goal was not to paint, but to create images.

Also, I'm pretty sure we would give a leg to have a CNC machine.

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