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A Eulogy for Vim

drewdevault.com

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Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#21

Post by endemic »

scrollaway wrote: post #12
mikkupikku wrote: post #2

I've long had great respect for Drew, way since way back when he was sircmpwn writing cool calculator software. Great programmer, and an incredibly based individual. Stays true to himself even in the face of overwhelming pressure. I completely disagree with his take on this; battleship vibecoder in vimscript is awesome and important, socially, because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses. I…

> because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses I've been coding for 24 years and vibe coding has made computer programming accessible to me . I've burned out on my work several times, to the point that a few years ago I became unable to open my IDE without getting headaches and nausea. This has killed one of the startups where I was fractional CTO and it's debilitating as an engineer to fee…

I'm debating using LLMs for my side projects. Does using one remove the "soul" of my project? On the other hand, a friend is actually making progress with his side app _because_ he's able to lean on the LLM after a full day's worth of working the day job. I might be able to actually do some of the things I've dreamed of and never had the capacity for. First world problems, I guess.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#22

Post by embedding-shape »

> I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is

Lord forbid if people disagree with you. I know Drew's vibe is always "I'm right because I'm the only one with the correct opinions", but it does get tiring after a while.

Not to say AI isn't having huge drawbacks being introduced, and aren't exactly worry-free, but why not change your frame of mind from "Why don't others understand how awful it is?!" to "People are seeing something I'm not, what am I missing?" so your article could actually contain something else than personal and emotions rants?

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#23

Post by lxgr »

School-Cotton wrote: post #6
mikkupikku wrote: post #2

I've long had great respect for Drew, way since way back when he was sircmpwn writing cool calculator software. Great programmer, and an incredibly based individual. Stays true to himself even in the face of overwhelming pressure. I completely disagree with his take on this; battleship vibecoder in vimscript is awesome and important, socially, because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses. I…

Computer programming has been accessible to the masses for years. All you need is motivation to learn. The only people vibe coding has made programming accessible to is people who don't have such motivation.

We've had this discussion back when high-level languages started becoming popular. Do the unwashed masses deserve to be programming a computer when they don't have a love and appreciation for assembly, or even the underlying ISA and its instruction encoding? And before that: How dare these whippersnappers just hand in their punched cards when they don't even know how to bit bang the boot sequence of the very computer executing them?

It's not even limited to a given occupation. Many hams were outraged about the FCC handing out amateur radio licenses without ANY demonstrated proficiency in morse!

Fortunately, at least in technology, nobody cares what these gatekeepers say. I guess that's an upside of software engineering never having graduated to be "actual engineering" (i.e. one with certifications and personal liability).

Nobody is preventing anyone from going as deep as they want to, and I expect that going one layer (or ten) deeper in understanding than your peers will still pay off even in a post-AI world. The nice thing is that now, nobody has to to just try something. (And you can ask the same system building these things for you how they work!)

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#24

Post by CobrastanJorji »

herodoturtle wrote: post #15

> And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate the jobs of the poor and replace them with a robot that lies. That sentence jumped out at me.

It's a little wrong. It's probably going to replace middle class jobs more than the jobs of the poor.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#26

Post by gundamdoubleO »

mikkupikku wrote: post #2

I've long had great respect for Drew, way since way back when he was sircmpwn writing cool calculator software. Great programmer, and an incredibly based individual. Stays true to himself even in the face of overwhelming pressure. I completely disagree with his take on this; battleship vibecoder in vimscript is awesome and important, socially, because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses. I…

It does things for them and tells them what to do. Is that really making programming more accessible? I guess in the sense of lowering the barrier to creating stuff. But accessible as in a path to actually start working on things yourself and developing an interest? For most people vibe coding 99% of their lines, I doubt it. And I don't really think that's a problem to be honest, but I don't really buy that it makes programming in and of itself more accessible, more just the result of that programming.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#27

Post by dinkleberg »

odst wrote: post #18
mikkupikku wrote: post #2

I've long had great respect for Drew, way since way back when he was sircmpwn writing cool calculator software. Great programmer, and an incredibly based individual. Stays true to himself even in the face of overwhelming pressure. I completely disagree with his take on this; battleship vibecoder in vimscript is awesome and important, socially, because vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses. I…

The argument that "vibe coding makes computer programming accessible to the masses" is something I don't understand. With all the free content on the internet, was it not accessible before?

Obviously the knowledge gap required to go from zero to doing something useful has shrunk substantially. That is improved accessibility.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#28

Post by sarchertech »

embedding-shape wrote: post #22

> I think it’s more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don’t understand how awful all of this is Lord forbid if people disagree with you. I know Drew's vibe is always "I'm right because I'm the only one with the correct opinions", but it does get tiring after a while. Not to say AI isn't having huge drawbacks being introduced, and aren't exactly worry-free, but why not change your frame of mind fr…

Well I think he’s taken a moral stance against AI, so it doesn’t matter to him if other people find it useful.

Re: A Eulogy for Vim

#30

Post by sam_lowry_ »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #24
herodoturtle wrote: post #15

> And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world’s total energy production in order to eliminate the jobs of the poor and replace them with a robot that lies. That sentence jumped out at me.

It's a little wrong. It's probably going to replace middle class jobs more than the jobs of the poor.

Poor tend to think of themselves as middle-class.
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