21–30 of 471 posts
> But now either the AI can handle it or it can pretend to handle it. Frankly it's pretending both times, but often it's enough to get the result we need. This has been how I think about it, too. The success rates are going up, but I still view the AI as an adversary that is trying to trick me into thinking it's being useful. Often the act is good enough to be actually useful, too.
The gambling metaphor often applied to vibecoding implies that the outcome cannot be fully controlled or influenced, such as a slot machine. Opus 4.5 and beyond show that it not only can be very much can be influenced, but also it can give better results more consistently with the proper checks and balances.
Poker is a skill-based game where your actions influence your success, but many people who play it are gambling.
Sometimes I think we put the Carr before the horse. We gamble because evolution promotes that approach.
Yes I could go for the reliable option. But taking a punt is worth a shot if the cost is low.
The cost of AI is low.
What is a problem is people getting wrapped up in just one more pull of the slot machine handle.
I use AI often. But fairly often I simply bin its reponse and get to work on my own. A decent amount of the time I can work with the response given to make a decent result.
Sometimes, rarely, it gives me what I need right off the bat.
I think there are levels to this. - One shot or "spray and pray" prompt only vibe coding: gambling. - Spec driven TDD AI vibe coding: more akin to poker. - Normal coding (maybe with tab auto complete): eating veggies/work. Notably though gambling has the massive downside of losing your entire life and life savings. Being in the "vibe coding" bucket's worse case is being insufferable to your friends and family, wastin…
This "slot machine" metaphor is played out. If you're just entering a coin's worth of information and nudging it over and over in the hopes of getting something good, that's a you problem, not a Claude problem. If, on the other hand, you treat it like a hyper-competent collaborator, and follow good project management and development practices, you're golden.
In a healthy environment. We are harmed more by being totally risk adverse. Than by accepting risk as part of life and work.
Assigning work to an intern is gambling: they're inherently non-deterministic and it's a roll of the dice whether the work they do will be good enough or you'll have to give them feedback in order to get to what you need.
2. Who here thinks that having interns write all/almost all of your code and moving all your mid level and senior developers to exclusively reviewing their work and managing them is a good idea?
> But now either the AI can handle it or it can pretend to handle it. Frankly it's pretending both times, but often it's enough to get the result we need. This has been how I think about it, too. The success rates are going up, but I still view the AI as an adversary that is trying to trick me into thinking it's being useful. Often the act is good enough to be actually useful, too.
The first anthropomorphization of AI which is actually useful.
This "slot machine" metaphor is played out. If you're just entering a coin's worth of information and nudging it over and over in the hopes of getting something good, that's a you problem, not a Claude problem. If, on the other hand, you treat it like a hyper-competent collaborator, and follow good project management and development practices, you're golden.