131–140 of 486 posts
Every few years something is going to kill code and here we are. The job changes, it does not disappear.
For future greenfield projects, I can see a world where the only jobs are spec-writer and test-writer, with maybe one grumpy expert coder (aka code janitor) who occasionally has to go into the code to figure out super gnarly issues.
The author’s intuition is still backward calibrated, even though he talks about the future. He doesn’t have an intuition for the future. All code will be AI generated. There’s no way to compete with the AI. And whatever new downsides this brings will be solved in ways we aren’t fully anticipating. But the solution is not to walk back vibecoding. You have to be blind to believe not most code will be vibecoded very soo…
The author’s intuition is still backward calibrated, even though he talks about the future. He doesn’t have an intuition for the future. All code will be AI generated. There’s no way to compete with the AI. And whatever new downsides this brings will be solved in ways we aren’t fully anticipating. But the solution is not to walk back vibecoding. You have to be blind to believe not most code will be vibecoded very soo…
Usually the response, for the last years, has been "no no you don't get it, it'll get so much better" and then they make the context window slightly larger and make it run python code to do math.
What will really happen is that you and people like you will let Claude or some other commerical product write code, which it then owns. The second Claude becomes more expensive, you will pay, because all your tooling, your "prompts saved in commits" etc. will not work the same with whatever other AI offer.
You've just reinvented vendor lock in, or "highly paid consultant code", on a whole new level.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. Well, of course. Despite people applying the label of AI to them, LLMs don't have a shred of intelligence. That is inherent to how they work. They don't understand, only synthesize from the data they were trained on.
> don't have a shred of intelligence. ... They don't understand, only synthesize from the data they were trained on. Couldn't you say that about 99% of humans too?
My problem is that while I know “code” isn’t going away, everyone seems to believe it is, and that’s influencing how we work. I have not really found anything that shakes these people down to their core. Any argument or example is handwaved away by claims that better use of agents or advanced models will solve these “temporary” setbacks. How do you crack them? Especially upper management.
I also believe coding isn't going to disappear, but AI skeptics have been mostly doing a combination of moving the goalposts and straight up denial over the last few years.
When you let an LLM author code, it takes ownership of that code (in the engineering sense).
When you're done spending millions on tokens, years of development, prompt fine tuning, model fine tuning, and made the AI vendor the fattest wad of cash ever seen, you know what the vendor will do?
You have to migration path. Your Codex prompts don't work the same in Claude. All the prompts you developed and saved in commits, all the (probably proprietary) memory the AI vendor saved in their servers to make the AI lock you in even more, all of it is worthless without the vendor.
You are inventing "ah heck, we need to pay the consultant another 300 bucks an hour to take a look at this, because nobody else owns this code", but supercharged.
You're locking yourself in, to a single vendor, to such a degree that they can just hold your code hostage.
Now sure, OpenAI would NEVER do this, because they're all just doing good for humanity. Sure. What if they go out of business? Or discontinue the model that works for you, and the new ones just don't quite respond the same to your company's well established workflows?
To all the vibe coders: When you let an LLM author code, it takes ownership of that code (in the engineering sense). When you're done spending millions on tokens, years of development, prompt fine tuning, model fine tuning, and made the AI vendor the fattest wad of cash ever seen, you know what the vendor will do? You have to migration path. Your Codex prompts don't work the same in Claude. All the prompts you develo…
The fact of reality is that the technology is so complex only for-profit centralized powers can really create these things. Linux and open source was a fluke and even then open source developers need closed source jobs to pay for their time doing open source.
We are locked in and this is the future. Accept it or deny it one is delusional the other is reality. The world is transforming into vibe coding whether you like it or not. Accept reality.
If you love programming, if you care for the craft. If programming is a form of artistry for you, if programming is your identity and status symbol. Then know that under current trends… all of that is going into the trash. Better rebuild a new identity quick.
A lot of delusional excuse scaffolds people build around themselves to protect their identity is they just say “the hard part of software wasn’t really programming” which is kind of stupid because AI covers the hard part too.. in fact it covers it better then actual coding. Either way this excuse is more viable then “ai is useless slop”
A week ago there was an artical about Donald Knuth asking an ai to prove something then unproved and it found the proof. I suppose it is possible that the great Knuth didn't know how to find this existing truth - but there is a reason we all doubted it (including me when I mentioned it there) i have never written a c compiler yet I would bet money if you paid me to write one (it would take a few years at least) it wo…
This makes LLMs incredibly powerful research tools, which can create the illusion of emergent capabilities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. Well, of course. Despite people applying the label of AI to them, LLMs don't have a shred of intelligence. That is inherent to how they work. They don't understand, only synthesize from the data they were trained on.
> don't have a shred of intelligence. ... They don't understand, only synthesize from the data they were trained on. Couldn't you say that about 99% of humans too?
And of course, if you don't limit yourself to "advancing the state of the art at the far frontiers of human knowledge" but allow for ordinary people to make everyday contributions in their daily lives, you get even more. Sure, much of this knowledge may not be widespread (it may be locked up within private institutions) but its impact can still be felt throughout the economy.
To all the vibe coders: When you let an LLM author code, it takes ownership of that code (in the engineering sense). When you're done spending millions on tokens, years of development, prompt fine tuning, model fine tuning, and made the AI vendor the fattest wad of cash ever seen, you know what the vendor will do? You have to migration path. Your Codex prompts don't work the same in Claude. All the prompts you develo…
They'll hire the person who knows AI, not the human clinging onto claims of artisanal character by character code.
It's entirely possible to engineer well-designed and intentional systems with AI tools and not stochastically "vibe" your way into tech debt.
AI engineers will get hiring preference. That is until we're all replaced by full agentic engineering. And that's coming.