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Vibe coding is mad depressing

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Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#21

Post by satvikpendem »

tptacek wrote: post #8

All the consulting practice arguments aside, this is fundamentally a gatekeeping argument about clients staying in their lane. I'm sure doctors feel the same way about patients with weirdly specific questions about HFpEF diagnoses. Doctors have always hated "Doctor Google", and now they have to contend with "Doctor GPT". It's up to you how much sympathy to have for them.

Not related to other types of clients, but for doctors and patients specifically, I have heard stories where doctors dismissed patients' concerns until the patients themselves googled and found out exactly what issue they had and then the doctors were much more amenable to solving it [0].

Indeed, [1]

> researchers found that searching symptoms online modestly boosted patients’ ability to accurately diagnose health issues without increasing their anxiety or misleading them to seek care inappropriately [...] the results of this survey study challenge the common belief among clinicians and policy-makers that using the Internet to search for health information is harmful.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/man-googles-rash-discover...

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084564/

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#22

Post by polalavik »

similar experience - i freelanced recently (embedded systems) where i was to interface to a "software engineer" doing the backend.

Every. single. time. we hit an interface problem he would say “if you don’t understand the error feel free to use ChatGPT”. Dude it’s bare metal embedded software I WROTE the error. Also, telling someone that was hired because of their expertise to chatgpt something is crazy insulting.

We are in an era of empowered idiots. People truly feel that access to this near infinite knowledge base means it is an extension of their capabilities.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#23

Post by sshadmand »

I feel like it allows me do more of the fun bits of coding and creating. It's not too different than giving the easy/basic/annoying stuff to consultants and less senior engineers. Do people get mad when the hire more devs? You still get to machinate over how to attack a problem in clever ways. Also, you can give 4 out of 5 tasks to the AI and leave the fun bits for yourself.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#24

Post by sergiotapia »

The only thing that matters anymore in corporate is: does the code solve the problem.

Also, is it just me or has the feeling of victory gone away completely 100% ever since AI became a thing? I used to sweat and struggle, and finally have my breakthrough, the "I'm invicible!" Boris moment before the next thing came into my task inbox.

I don't feel that high anymore. I only recently realized this.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#25

Post by qsort »

tptacek wrote: post #8

All the consulting practice arguments aside, this is fundamentally a gatekeeping argument about clients staying in their lane. I'm sure doctors feel the same way about patients with weirdly specific questions about HFpEF diagnoses. Doctors have always hated "Doctor Google", and now they have to contend with "Doctor GPT". It's up to you how much sympathy to have for them.

As someone who does consulting, it's more about the attitude than the tool itself. Clients trying to understand the problem by themselves with whatever tools they can use are generally well-disposed and easy to work with. Those who email you stuff like "Why don't you have chatgpt do this???" as if it's a revolutionary thought are mostly a PITA. I assume doctors feel largely the same.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#26

Post by sebastiennight »

> There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth.

Reality check: none of that ever existed, unless either the client mandated it (as a way to tightly regulate output quality from cheaper developers) or the developer mandated it (justifying their much higher prices and value to the customer).

Other than that: average customer buying code from average developer means:

- git was never even considered

- if git was ever used, everything is merged into "master" in huge commits

- no scheduled reviews, they only saw each other when it's time for the next quarterly/monthly payment and the client was shown (but not able to use) some preview of what's done so far

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#27

Post by tptacek »

qsort wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #8

All the consulting practice arguments aside, this is fundamentally a gatekeeping argument about clients staying in their lane. I'm sure doctors feel the same way about patients with weirdly specific questions about HFpEF diagnoses. Doctors have always hated "Doctor Google", and now they have to contend with "Doctor GPT". It's up to you how much sympathy to have for them.

As someone who does consulting, it's more about the attitude than the tool itself. Clients trying to understand the problem by themselves with whatever tools they can use are generally well-disposed and easy to work with. Those who email you stuff like "Why don't you have chatgpt do this???" as if it's a revolutionary thought are mostly a PITA. I assume doctors feel largely the same.

I feel like my consulting bona fides are also pretty strong, and while I get how annoying this must feel, it's hard for me personally to be irritated either at clients or at frontier models for enabling clients to do this.

To me it's more like the board, in some small way, being shaken up, and what I mostly see is an opportunity for consultancies to excel at interfacing with clients who come to them with LLM code and LLM-generated ideas.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#29

Post by chairmansteve »

bamboozled wrote: post #9

You have to drive the LLM, you cannot let it drive. Therefore you still need to code. There is no best practices anymore, no proper process, no meaningful back and forth. There absolutely is and you need to work with the tools to make sure this happens. Else chaos will ensue. Been working with these things heavily for development for 6-12 months. You absolutely must code with them.

You are right. They are powerful tools when in the hands of a skilled craftsman.

Re: Vibe coding is mad depressing

#30

Post by qsort »

tptacek wrote: post #27
qsort wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does consulting, it's more about the attitude than the tool itself. Clients trying to understand the problem by themselves with whatever tools they can use are generally well-disposed and easy to work with. Those who email you stuff like "Why don't you have chatgpt do this???" as if it's a revolutionary thought are mostly a PITA. I assume doctors feel largely the same.

I feel like my consulting bona fides are also pretty strong, and while I get how annoying this must feel, it's hard for me personally to be irritated either at clients or at frontier models for enabling clients to do this. To me it's more like the board, in some small way, being shaken up, and what I mostly see is an opportunity for consultancies to excel at interfacing with clients who come to them with LLM code and…

Sure, that's a great point. If the LLM code/ideas they come with are actually valuable, they tend to fall into the first bucket though.

I'm not saying we need to dismiss people for using LLMs at all, for better or for worse we live in a world where LLMs are here to stay. The annoying people would have found a way to be annoying even without AI, I'm sure.

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