Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very interesting to me how many people presume that if you don't learn how to vibecode now you'll never ever be able to catch up. If the models are constantly getting better, won't these tools be easier to use a year from now? Will model improvements not obviate all the byzantine prompting strategies we have to use today?
I think the AI-coding skill that is likely to remain useful is the ability (and discipline) to review and genuinely understand the code produced by the AI before committing it. I don't have that skill; I find that if I'm using AI, I'm strongly drawn toward the lazy approach. At the moment, the only way for me to actually understand the code I'm producing is to write it all myself. (That puts my brain into an active c…
> I don't have that skill; I find that if I'm using AI, I'm strongly drawn toward the lazy approach. At the moment, the only way for me to actually understand the code I'm producing is to write it all myself. (That puts my brain into an active coding/puzzle solving state, rather than a passive energy-saving state.)
When I review code, I try to genuinely understand it, but it's a huge mental drain. It's just a slog, and I'm tired at the end. Very little flow state.
Writing code can get me into a flow state.
That's why I pretty much only use LLMs to vibecode one-off scripts and do code reviews (after my own manual review, to see if it can catch something I missed). Anything more would be too exhausting.