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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

#181

Post by tovej »

dwb wrote: post #93
tovej wrote: 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.…

Ok well I have plenty of serious, production-level professional experience that says otherwise. Not “vibe coding” - we certainly review the code. It’s a tool that has downsides and failure modes, of course, but it’s at the point where it’s definitely speeding us up and we are using it a lot. Trust me, I’d prefer a world, on balance, where this wasn’t true – I don’t like many of the aspects and uses of the technology…

I'm curious, where are you using the tools? What programming language? what domain? Are you willing to share the projects you're working on?

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#182

Post by tovej »

hu3 wrote: post #154
chneu wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But most people are not vibe coding outside of pet projects, at least yet. Major corporations have had outages thanks to AI slop code. Lol the idea that people aren't vibe coding outside of pet projects is hilarious.

The idea that everyone using LLMs is vibe coding is equally hilarious.

If you use an LLM to generate source code you are vibecoding.

You specify the problem in natural language (the vibes) and the LLM spits out source (the code).

Whether you review it or not, that is vibecoding. You did not go through the rigor of translating the requirements to a programming language, you had a nondeterministic black box generate something in the rough general vicinity of the prompt.

Are people seriously trying to redefine what vibecoding is?

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#183

Post by tovej »

kstenerud wrote: post #33

This is to be expected. There's a definite split in the engineering community between those who are embracing AI, and those who are rejecting it. It's now become political, like systemd and wayland.

I have not met any engineer who is actually embracing LLMs. I have met managers and interns who are.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#184

Post by [deleted] »

phpnode wrote: post #145
yoz-y wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully this does not devolve into ‘nuh-uh’-‘it is too’ but I disagree. Even putting aside the AI engineering part where you use a model as a brick in your program. Classic programming is based on assumption that there is a formal strict input language. When programming I think in that language, I hold the data structures and connections in my head. When debugging I have intuition on what is going on because I know…

This is the same argument that people used to have against compilers

[deleted]

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#185

Post by dwb »

tovej wrote: post #181
dwb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok well I have plenty of serious, production-level professional experience that says otherwise. Not “vibe coding” - we certainly review the code. It’s a tool that has downsides and failure modes, of course, but it’s at the point where it’s definitely speeding us up and we are using it a lot. Trust me, I’d prefer a world, on balance, where this wasn’t true – I don’t like many of the aspects and uses of the technology…

I'm curious, where are you using the tools? What programming language? what domain? Are you willing to share the projects you're working on?

TypeScript and Go on a 1.5 million SLOC production codebase; a complex SaaS tool for financial planning and analysis. Quite far from being “just CRUD”. Before Anthropic Opus 4.5 I was trying out Claude Code and wasn’t all that impressed, but since then it’s definitely helped. The project I wrapped up before Christmas would have gone into the new year without it. You’ve still got to keep a close eye on it; whenever I’ve got lazy with review, trusting it too much, I’ve always regretted it. It’s never one-shotted anything, even with plan mode and all that. I’m a natural skeptic on this stuff and was very actually skeptical for most of last year. But I’m very confident there’s a large net productivity gain now.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#186

Post by siva7 »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #172
JKCalhoun wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Sheer nonsense. Handcoding is thriving and will easily survive long into the future, especially after the bubble bursts (which is already happening).

Amen. Just like hand washing clothes survived the washing machine fade.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#187

Post by siva7 »

mudkipdev wrote: post #16

There can't be any interesting discussion about AI programming. Every conversation boils down to what skill files you use, or how Opus 4.6 compares to Codex, or how well you can manage 16 parallel agents.

so like the past? how emacs compares to vim? how java compares to javascript? how a true programmer can read binary files without a blink?

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#188

Post by siva7 »

johnfn wrote: post #173
mrcsharp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, almost every single time a conversation like this happens in real life it boils down to the one side claiming that "This is the future" and "Don't get left behind" followed by a torrent of hype and buzzwords. So no, there is no interesting conversations to be had about LLM programming anymore.

Maybe you struggle to have good conversations because I just provided an anecdote and you immediately stated that my anecdote is false? If this is how you typically interact with people I’m not surprised you’re not having interesting conversations.

Brilliantly mirrored! Unfortunately there are far more people like this than i would have ever imagined pre ai.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#189

Post by Henchman21 »

pscanf wrote: 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…

I gave up on Reddit after many years of acting as characters on the Venture Bros subreddit. Every so often I would retire my account and begin a new one. I've had MANY over the years. I've used Reddit "cleanup" apps to remove/clean the content I've created. Good stuff over time, very niche and specific to VB.

I gave it all up when Reddit started recycling my old accounts and reposting my content as if it were new -- but not authored by me, just regurgitated back onto the site.

If that happened to me, you can bet it's happening en masse. Which indicates to me that the site is really dead.

Re: r/programming bans all discussion of LLM programming

#190

Post by xboxnolifes »

tovej wrote: post #180
xboxnolifes wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't anything particularly special, most projects I interact with have at least 1 dev who uses LLMs in some capacity. The two I was thinking of when I posted are the Minecraft modpack GregTech: New Horizons, and an Old School Runescape plugin. https://github.com/gtnewhorizons https://github.com/osrs-reldo/tasks-tracker-plugin

I see. I would not consider these to be serious projects. I'm sure they give people joy, and contain some decent problem solving, but they are both small extensions to existing software, and are not really solving interesting new problems or creating their own systems.

The first one is hardly a small extension. It's millions of lines of code, which is multiple times more than the version of Minecraft it extends.
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