i don't understand the stance of the post and it being the first in the blog (congrats on getting this hot on your first post) I am unable to further investigate. Is it sci-fi like writing from the perspective of a future person? It sounds like someone trying to make assumption sounds as fact. Not a fan.
I assume you didn’t make it to the last paragraph, where they put the punchline.
That "punchline" seems just a final argument in support of the thesis (that manual coding is becoming absurd, and only people as dumb as apes will insist on doing it).
> The central view of ape coding proponents was that software engineered by AIs did not match the reliability of software engineered by humans That's not the reason to do ape coding. AI generated code is not innovative. If you want to build something that no one has built anything similar to then you have to ape code. See Chris Lattner's blog where he explains the limitations of AI: https://www.modular.com/blog/the-c…
That's just not true. It's like saying compiled code couldn't be innovative, that the only innovative code is assembly. People used to say stuff like that too, in their fear of being replaced. There's nothing new under the sun, I guess [double entendre].
I call it Tradcoding. Not using AI for anything. (You just copy-paste from StackOverflow, as our forefathers once did ;) I also have two levels "beneath" vibe coding: - Power Coding: Like power armor, you describe chunks of code in English and it's built. Here you outsource syntax and stdlib, but remain in control of architecture and data flow. - Backseat Coding: Like vibe coding but you keep peeking at the code and…
I think 'tab coding' should be a distinct group. When wast majority of the code just written through accepting autosuggestions.
I call it Tradcoding. Not using AI for anything. (You just copy-paste from StackOverflow, as our forefathers once did ;) I also have two levels "beneath" vibe coding: - Power Coding: Like power armor, you describe chunks of code in English and it's built. Here you outsource syntax and stdlib, but remain in control of architecture and data flow. - Backseat Coding: Like vibe coding but you keep peeking at the code and…
I'm waiting for someone to polish a well thought out interface for power coding
The process that Get Shit Done forces is pretty good, with Claude Code as the interface.
It's not ape coding. It's skill coding. People who don't have the skill to do math and logic ask others to do it for them. The reason we have programming languages is the same reason we have musical notation or math notation. It is a far more concise and precise way of communicating than using natural languages. We could write music using natural language, but no one does because a single page of music would require…
It's funny that you mention music and notation: sheet music is very compact for musical absolutes like pitch/rhythm/harmony, but a huge part of what we care about with music is nuance, which doesn't reduce cleanly to symbols. Hence there are plenty of words in musical notation that try to describe the desired characteristics of performance, that can't be otherwise encoded into that notation. For example, "with feelin…
Self evidently not the case, look at people absolutely falling over themselves to pay hundreds for seats at West End/Broadway shows just to see the spectacle of live human performance.
This is why I never use a calculator. Since my school days I have the skill to do long division. Why hit the sin button when I have the skill to write out a Taylor series expansion? For many other purposes I have the skill to use Newton Raphson methods to calculate values that mostly work. Those who use a calculator simply don't have these skills.
Meanwhile those who use a calculator merely hit that sin button and get on with the actual problem at hand, and life in general. Strongly suspect this is sarcasm, but if it isn't, I applaud your... gusto? Or whatever it is you have going on here.
Producing code that does what's intended. The metric is fuzzy and based on the usage of the software, not the scale of lines of code. The extent of the importance of the code itself is that I'm practice software tends not to be "one and done", so you need to be able to go back and modify it to fix bugs, add features, etc., and it turns out that's usually hard when the code is sloppy. Those needs still should stem fro…
Would my user rather have a program that works 100% in 2 weeks, or a program that works 80% in one day? When the user needs a change made, would they prefer I spend another two weeks extending my perfect program, or throw a few LLMs at their sloppy code and have it done in a day?
That would depend on who your users are and what they're using their program for. My point is that the context of who is using the program, how they're using it, and what they're using it for are what actually matters, because most of the time, software that no one uses is by definition useless. There are circumstances where that might not apply, like code used as part of education or training (whether in a formal course or a project someone writes specifically because they're trying to learn something from the process) or when the purpose is aesthetic or humorous, but I'd argue that whatever process makes sense for them doesn't necessarily bear any resemblance given how different the goals are.
I think this is going to be very prescient! Just as Baristas died out once we got machines that could make coffee from powders.
People also stopped ape-walking after the invention of the bicycle.
I mean it is true to say that most people in the West now use a car for transport, and walking has become more of a leisure pursuit (rebranded as "hiking") rather than a practical necessity.
I call it Tradcoding. Not using AI for anything. (You just copy-paste from StackOverflow, as our forefathers once did ;) I also have two levels "beneath" vibe coding: - Power Coding: Like power armor, you describe chunks of code in English and it's built. Here you outsource syntax and stdlib, but remain in control of architecture and data flow. - Backseat Coding: Like vibe coding but you keep peeking at the code and…
Harness/fill in the gaps coding: you define a bunch of tests/reference output/validation procedures, let the AI spin until all lights are green