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r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

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Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compilers are an abstraction. AI coding is not an abstraction by any reasonable definition.

You're only thinking that because we're mostly still at the imperative, REPL stage. We're telling them what to do in a loop. Instead we should be declaring what we want to be true.

You’re describing a hypothetical that doesn’t exist. Even if we assume it will exist someday we can’t reasonably compare it to what exists today.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#162
post #62
post #44

I know this snarky, I'm sorry ahead of time. But I don't know how else to make this point... The fact that the people running r/progamming don't know not to wait until April 2 to publish this tells me that they don't have real-world experience in shipping software in a business environment. We are SO past the point of software being developed without LLMs at _all_, the trend line is never going to reverse. I don't un…

I have yet to run into any serious project in the wild that is using LLMs for development. I have seen vibecoded intern prototypes that took half a day to vet and dismiss because they were completely useless. I'm sure your experience is different, but you can't _seriously_ claim we're "past the point" of not using LLMs for programming. Vibecoding is a fundamentally different kind of activity than actual programming.…

How can you still can't distinguish between using LLMs as tools and a non technical person vibe coding? I have yet to run into any serious software engineer that had to dive into a legacy codebase or an unknown tech stack and found no value in e.g. Claude Code for general understanding and refactoring. Not even talking about coding, just the capacity of generating custom contextualised documentation and examples tailored to your constraints and skills on the fly is ridiculously helpful.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, no, why would it be? There is so, so much to talk about in programming other than AI. Meanwhile, the current HN front page feels like 90% LLM spam: the complete antithesis of what I used to come here for. I personally can’t wait for no-ai communities to proliferate.

Taking your estimate as a superlative, it would be asinine for the community here to censor AI-targeted discussions in the way I think you'd like to. The same goes for a programming community that censors discussions about LLM programming. You are basically asking for a brain drain in a field that—like it or not—is going to be crucial in the future in spite of its obvious warts and poor implementation in the present.…

[dead]

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#165
post #61

Good decision. AI programming is fundamentally different from programming and as such the discussions merit to have separate forums. If r/programming wants to be the one solely focusing on programming then power to them. Discussing both in combination also makes sense, but the value of reddit is having a subreddit for anything and “just programming” should be on the list.

Sure, but if r/programming can't include the combination/hybrid then the whole subreddit is likely doomed to obsolescence. That genie's not going back into the lamp. (Heck, I've leaned on LLMs to generate damned SwiftUI code for me.)

There are groups for carpenters who only use hand tools. Obsolete and existing.

And, arguably, still useful to all.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#166
post #40

I gave up on r/programming after an article I wrote (thoughtfully, without AI, even though the content might not have been super interesting) got mod-slapped with a stickied comment "This content is low quality, stolen, blogspam, or clearly AI generated". Ironically, that comment was added three months after I posted the article, when it was nowhere near the front page anymore, in a clearly automated and AI-driven re…

Do you think maybe it's the disclosure about self promotion you added? You explicitly say the purpose of the blog post is to promote your consultancy, so that might be why they marked it blogspam. I know it feels like you're being forthright, but really that you're promoting yourself is implicit in the fact it's a personal blog, so you can leave that out and still be honest.

Yeah, maybe it's that, though I still wouldn't expect someone to categorize the post as blogspam, even if they just glance at it. (At least according to my definition of blogspam, but I guess each has their own.) But yes, pragmatically I should probably remove the disclaimer.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#167
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to run into any serious project in the wild that is using LLMs for development. I have seen vibecoded intern prototypes that took half a day to vet and dismiss because they were completely useless. I'm sure your experience is different, but you can't _seriously_ claim we're "past the point" of not using LLMs for programming. Vibecoding is a fundamentally different kind of activity than actual programming.…

How can you still can't distinguish between using LLMs as tools and a non technical person vibe coding? I have yet to run into any serious software engineer that had to dive into a legacy codebase or an unknown tech stack and found no value in e.g. Claude Code for general understanding and refactoring. Not even talking about coding, just the capacity of generating custom contextualised documentation and examples tail…

The tool being useful sometimes does not support the statement that we are "past the point" of not using LLMs.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only thinking that because we're mostly still at the imperative, REPL stage. We're telling them what to do in a loop. Instead we should be declaring what we want to be true.

You’re describing a hypothetical that doesn’t exist. Even if we assume it will exist someday we can’t reasonably compare it to what exists today.

It exists today, please message me if you’d like to try it

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#169
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to run into any serious project in the wild that is using LLMs for development. I have seen vibecoded intern prototypes that took half a day to vet and dismiss because they were completely useless. I'm sure your experience is different, but you can't _seriously_ claim we're "past the point" of not using LLMs for programming. Vibecoding is a fundamentally different kind of activity than actual programming.…

What do you consider "serious", as that seems to be the main differentiator here. I know plenty of serious (multiple years of development and users, and began prior to LLMs) projects that have devs using LLMs for development.

That makes me curious, would you like to list them?

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#170
post #87
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to run into any serious project in the wild that is using LLMs for development. I have seen vibecoded intern prototypes that took half a day to vet and dismiss because they were completely useless. I'm sure your experience is different, but you can't _seriously_ claim we're "past the point" of not using LLMs for programming. Vibecoding is a fundamentally different kind of activity than actual programming.…

> I have seen vibecoded intern prototypes that took half a day to vet and dismiss because they were completely useless. They weren't useless, they proved if the direction that the prototype was exploring was worthwhile. I've personally made many completely shit code prototypes in the years before we had LLM's, of course they weren't magically production ready, that's not the point of a prototype.

The example I'm thinking of did not. It was just the dumbest way to execute an idea we knew was easy to execute (scanning a parameter space).
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