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Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

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Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#121

Post by kelnos »

To be clear, this was not a vibe coding exercise, despite the title. The author supervised and reviewed the code changes at every step, caught mistakes and sub-optimal solutions, and worked with the LLM to fix and improve those problems.

This is not someone who just said "build me X", left it to run for a while, and then accepted whatever it wrote without reading it.

(I'm not criticizing the article's author here. It was an excellent, thoughtful read, and I think an article that was actually about something vibe-coded would be boring and not really teach me anything useful.)

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#122

Post by fnordpiglet »

theshrike79 wrote: post #92
fnordpiglet wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the sign of seniority IMO. First you learn to write code. Then you learn to write code that can be read. Then you learn to modify code. Then you learn to read other people’s code. Then you learn to modify other people’s code. Then you learn to own code regardless of who reads or writes it. At this point in my career 35 years in I find reading and writing code whether I wrote it or other did irrelevant. Bad or…

This is the thing. LLM assisted coding ("vibe coding") is just project management. You ask it to do things, then you check the work to a sufficient degree. The better the specifications and documentation you give it, the better the result will be. Keeping tasks short and verifiable also helps a lot. I've written SO many small tools for myself during the last year it's not even funny. Upgraded some shitty late night P…

Funny I end up working on 5-6 things at once that are fairly varied. My favorite rats nest is rebuilding by DIY NAS as a NixOS declaration so I can rebuild the filer root from GitHub.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#124

Post by TuringTest »

latexr wrote: post #98
kaptainscarlet wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also had a similar experience. I have become too lazy since I started vibe-coding. My coding has transitioned from coder to code reviewer/fixer vey quickly. Overall I feel like it's a good thing because the last few years of my life has been a repetition of frontend components and api endpoints, which to me has become too monotonous so I am happy to have AI take over that grunt work while I supervise.

> My coding has transitioned from coder to code reviewer/fixer vey quickly. Overall I feel like it's a good thing Until you lose access to the LLM and find your ability has atrophied to the point you have to look up the simplest of keywords. > the last few years of my life has been a repetition of frontend components and api endpoints, which to me has become too monotonous It’s a surprise that so many people have thi…

> Until you lose access to the LLM and find your ability has atrophied to the point you have to look up the simplest of keywords.

You can locally run pretty decent coding models such as Qwen3 Coder in a RTX 4090 GPU through LM Studio or Ollama with Cline.

It's a good idea even if they give slightly worse results in average, as you can limit your spending of expensive tokens for trivial grunt work and use them only for the really hard questions where Claude or ChatGPT 5 will excel.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#125

Post by furyofantares »

the_af wrote: post #71
furyofantares wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But who will hire them? Anyone who wants a competitive advantage? My claim is that the gap between junior and senior has temporarily widened, which is why someone who previously would want to hire juniors might not right now. But I expect it will narrow as a generation that learned on this stuff comes into the fold, probably to a smaller gap than existed pre-LLM. I think it will also narrow if the tools continue to…

> Anyone who wants a competitive advantage? Do you mean long-term vision? Short-term the advantage is in hiring only seniors, but do you mean companies will foresee trouble looming ahead and "waste" money on juniors just to avert this disaster? My own feeling is that this could become like a sort of... well, I recently heard of the term "population time bomb", and it was eye-opening for me. How once it starts rolling…

No, I think new developers who are "native" to this world will be a whole different breed. Maybe still not as good as seniors (as has always been the case) but closer than ever.

I could certainly see a wave of oversupply of juniors followed by a wave of undersupply. Say we stop hiring many juniors - a lot of people trying to get into industry right now are in for a rude time. Then maybe fewer people trying to learn it over the next few years, but those who do end up quite valuable.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#126

Post by latexr »

TuringTest wrote: post #124
latexr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My coding has transitioned from coder to code reviewer/fixer vey quickly. Overall I feel like it's a good thing Until you lose access to the LLM and find your ability has atrophied to the point you have to look up the simplest of keywords. > the last few years of my life has been a repetition of frontend components and api endpoints, which to me has become too monotonous It’s a surprise that so many people have thi…

> Until you lose access to the LLM and find your ability has atrophied to the point you have to look up the simplest of keywords. You can locally run pretty decent coding models such as Qwen3 Coder in a RTX 4090 GPU through LM Studio or Ollama with Cline. It's a good idea even if they give slightly worse results in average, as you can limit your spending of expensive tokens for trivial grunt work and use them only fo…

Or you could use your brain, which will actually learn and improve.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#127

Post by latexr »

onion2k wrote: post #113
latexr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My coding has transitioned from coder to code reviewer/fixer vey quickly. Overall I feel like it's a good thing Until you lose access to the LLM and find your ability has atrophied to the point you have to look up the simplest of keywords. > the last few years of my life has been a repetition of frontend components and api endpoints, which to me has become too monotonous It’s a surprise that so many people have thi…

Until you lose access to the LLM and find your ability has atrophied to the point you have to look up the simplest of keywords. Devs shouldn't be blindly accepting the output of an LLM. They should always be reviewing it, and only committing the code that they're happy to be accountable for. Consequently your coding and syntax knowledge can't really atrophy like that. Algorithms and data structures on the other hand.…

> Devs shouldn't be blindly accepting the output of an LLM.

I agree, they shouldn’t. Yet they are. Not all, of course, but a large enough portion to be a problem. And it’s not just a problem for them, but everyone who has to use what they built.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#128

Post by kachapopopow »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #20
kachapopopow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell my agent to off it self every couple of hours, it's definitely placebo as you're just introducing noise which might or might not be good. Adding hmm, has been my goto for a bit if I want it to force to give me different results cause it appears to trigger some latent regions of the llms.

This seems to be exactly what I’m talking about though. We made a completely subjective system and now everyone has completely subjective advice about what works. I’m not saying introducing noise isn’t a valid option, just doing it in ‘X’ or ‘y’ method as dogma is straight bullshit.

I was thinking about this and I disagree, if you can force "better" paths for programming based on the prompt I think that might as well give you better results.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#129

Post by remich »

razzmatazmania wrote: post #83
sema4hacker wrote: post #64

If I was told I'd be working with a fellow programmer who would make all the mistakes listed in Section 5 of the article, I'd have to say "no thanks". Yet the author ends with "I don’t think I will ever code again without the assistance of an AI model". He's a lot more thick-skinned than I.

Some people also value programs for their productive ends rather than value them for the process of writing them in a pleasing way. Personally, I've been getting more done than ever with Claude Code. That I am able to work just a few minutes at a time then let the machine go is really nice as a parent. For those of us who don't program for a day job, but need programs for our day job, Claude and friends have complete…

Even those of us who do program for a day job can end up in a situation where focus time is hard to come by. The more senior you are in an IC role, the more likely it is you have more demands on your time than there are hours in the day. I find that Claude (via Warp) has helped me accomplish things that otherwise wouldn't get done because I'm bouncing from meeting to meeting or answering the nth dm.

Re: Vibe coding as a coding veteran: from 8-bit assembly to English-as-code

#130

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

kachapopopow wrote: post #128
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be exactly what I’m talking about though. We made a completely subjective system and now everyone has completely subjective advice about what works. I’m not saying introducing noise isn’t a valid option, just doing it in ‘X’ or ‘y’ method as dogma is straight bullshit.

I was thinking about this and I disagree, if you can force "better" paths for programming based on the prompt I think that might as well give you better results.

IF, MIGHT, “BETTER”

… right. Now you are on the same page. Maybe adding fluff helps, maybe it hurts. You have no idea of knowing before or after the prompt.

Show me research that says over thousands of benchmarks that pole riding you AI before the request gives better responses.

It’s placebo.

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