I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective • Hacker News Board

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#151

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 10:53 AM UTC

BayArea925 wrote: post #20

isoprophlex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vibe coding is a death trap for juniors just starting out, as it kills critical thinking and understanding what a computer is. And a guaranteed paycheck for people with the experience to clean up the resulting messes. I hope...

Coding will not be done by juniors anymore. We are quickly progressing to humans no longer needing to learn machine langauage (syntax) and computers better developing code by interpreting human languages (english). Teams will be led by one subject matter expert, and fulfilled by thousands of agents. I would not be advising anyone under 21 to become a "coder". Studying computer sceince still has value, but coding was…

>Teams will be led by one subject matter expert

and in 20 years, how are we developing this "subject matter expert"?

>Once we can do LLM code reviews with high confidence and little error, coding is essentially a dead field.

Maybe by the time I retire. I think people in their early 20's will still get a solid career out of coding in the meantime while we go through the inevitable hype cycle of shiny new tech. Even if in the middle of their careers they may truly have their hands forced.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#152

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 10:55 AM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #84

pests wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same promise all the no-code or low-code app builders claim. Anyone who has done a serious project with LLM help knows it is no where near able to do half the things needed to run a project.

Skill issue, you aren't vibe coding properly. I am not joking.

I'll let others figure it out first then while I get actual work done, in that case. It's not like prompt engineering is going to make the job search any easier.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#153

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 11:01 AM UTC

bloppe wrote: post #148

BayArea925 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coding will not be done by juniors anymore. We are quickly progressing to humans no longer needing to learn machine langauage (syntax) and computers better developing code by interpreting human languages (english). Teams will be led by one subject matter expert, and fulfilled by thousands of agents. I would not be advising anyone under 21 to become a "coder". Studying computer sceince still has value, but coding was…

I have a theory that all the people who truly believe this are either not software developers or have spent their whole career writing boring, cookie-cutter code. I'm over here trying to play with bleeding edge tech and push some boundaries. I keep trying to get LLMs to help me and they keep letting me down.

It's definitely domain specific. I'm sure people working in web or databases has a lot of data to train off of for obvious reasons.

I'm sure this is less thann useless for stuff like embedded or other low level coding.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#154

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

amarant wrote: post #57

uludag wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vibe coding is here to stay. I would say this is true in the same way that copy-paste coding functioned and that vibe coding isn't fundamentally different. It can be a useful approach to a variety of problems. Having capable, knowledgable, and skilled employees is important to businesses though. If your business is something easily approachable then you are at risk of being outcompeted from companies with more skil…

I'm not convinced the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. Surely a skilled developer could make use of AI to produce stuff faster, while still understanding everything and making sure the code is well written (well generated?) Haven't really tried vibe coding myself yet, but I'm tempted to give it a go. I imagine stuff like integrating external API's could be really handy, looking through external documentation a…

> Surely a skilled developer could make use of AI to produce stuff faster, while still understanding everything and making sure the code is well written (well generated?)

Yes. But in these early stages, that will only prove the LLM's can't do much more than be a fancy autocomplete, as opposed to a way to accelerate the workflow navigating anything with real-world value.

Maybe in a few years for the most common domains this will truly shine.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#155

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #12

billy99k wrote: post #5

"that’s when it struck me. coding isn’t about the finished product. its a lot like writing. its about the process. its about how you approach a problem. its critical thinking." From a business perspective, they don't care about this. They just want it built as inexpensively as possible in a reasonable time frame. Vibe coding is here to stay.

"stay" - we'll see how this vibe codes lives and breathes for years

I'm sure it'll stay the same thing any low effort actions stay around. People will instead just get better at identifying the low effort and filtering it out.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#156

Post by sph » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 12:35 PM UTC

malthaus wrote: post #76

sph wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoomers that write in lowercase because it's more "chill"; go figure. It's a pretty reliable indicator that you're talking to someone < 25 years old.

i've been writing lowercase only since the 90s and i'm a first year millennial the genz kids are just the first ones who made it broadly acceptable... thank god, because it's a waste of brain cycles without added information - and i'm a native german speaker where it's even more stupid

Capitals are added bits of information. They're the difference between "I helped my uncle Jack off a horse" and "i helped my uncle jack off a horse".

You do you, of course, but let's not pretend it's more than a stylistic affectation.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#157

Post by elliotbnvl » Thu, Apr 24, 2025, 3:57 PM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #125

elliotbnvl wrote: post #82

Don't: vibe code. Do: agentic code.

What's agentic code?

When you use an agentic coding tool like Cursor as an assisting tool instead of a standalone developer. Carefully reading every line it writes and committing it as your own.

Re: I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective

#158

Post by beaugunderson » Fri, Apr 25, 2025, 7:12 AM UTC

captainkrtek wrote: post #28

Using AI to assist in locating the right library function or similar to documentation has been effective to speed up my development, but I really dislike using it to autocomplete whole functions or large swathes of code, because then I have to spend time reading and understanding code I didn't write. This doesn't ultimately feel "faster" when I own what I write.

> Using AI to assist in locating the right library function

Works mildly OK until it invents new functions or libraries for you and wastes your time or worse, you find the library exists but it only exists because of slopsquatting (enterprising scammers realized that LLMs like to recommend the same non-existent libraries and snatched up the names)